Labels and Access

[thegamewarden]

I would like to see more options around the labels feature. More specifically, I would like to restrict access to threads with specific labels to specific member groups. For example, if a member from a member group who has permission to assign labels gives a thread a label that only certain members have access to, only that group can view the thread.

The way I understand it now, labels are nothing more than that and the only thing that is restrictive is the viewing of the label itself. Personally, I haven't found a need or use for that... I'm sure somebody has, but I haven't .

[RedBassett]

While I'm not sure how to do so without making the admin panel that much more complex, I like the idea of multiple classes of labels, some for internal staff use and some for public use, or some labels that the public can apply to their own threads, and some only staff can, etc.

[Ryan Roos]

We had a discussion about this and we won't be adding this feature at this time.

Conceptually we like the idea. It sounds like something that could work... until you start discussing using it and implementation.

First, and really the most important. There is no such thing as thread permissions. This doesn't exist, and for good reason. Threads automatically inherit the permissions of their board. The top reason for that is because if every thread had it's own permissions then every thread would need to be checked for who can see it and who can access it whenever you load a board page. Meaning every single thread would have a query running on it. This would kill your forum (and our servers). So this request would require us to add thread permissions and now you can see why that's the first big problem that kills the whole idea before I even touch on anything else.

Second. The management of such a permissions system would be nuts. Every label would have it's own group permissions. And you can apply multiple labels to a thread. Now you have mixed permissions, possibly contradictory on the same thread. The board itself already has overall permissions for who can see and use labels. So now lets assume someone applies a label that then excludes themselves from seeing it because of the label permissions. Poof, thread gone. Now what do they do?

That leads to problem number three. Only certain people can see or use labels on a board. Let's say you are someone who is a regular member with no label control or viewing. Suddenly a thread you've been posting in suddenly won't let you post. It isn't locked, but you can't reply. And what's this? Another thread you started just disappeared from the board completely. Must have gotten deleted, right? The weird thing is you keep getting notifications from the thread you thought was deleted. All because threads are blocking your permissions to reply or see them. As a normal member this would be madness.

Which leads me to problem number four. I don't think it would be madness just for normal members, I think it would be madness for staff as well. Trying to mentally keep track of what permissions are being applied with each label would be insanely difficult. Even if we were to add a hover permissions text or some sort of breakdown in the label drop down (which there is no room for) it would still be hard to know who is seeing what and who is accessing what. We had a hard enough time handling this when it came to sub-sub-sub-boards in the boards and categories page. On a thread by thread level this would be nuts.

Thread labels are meant to help you organize threads. They aren't meant to help you moderate who can access them. They are exactly what they are called, labels. For example on the v5 boards here on support the staff have labels that we use to indicate if we've started helping some one, or if a thread requires the attention of a certain person. And afterwards we apply a label to indicate that we have complete helping out. The labels are a way to communicate the status of threads throughout our staff. Another forum may use them to indicate thread content, for example it might say 'video' or 'photo'. An RP forum may use it to indicate characters present or other things like that. There are dozens of uses for the labels. But none of them include who can access or see a thread.

We could very likely find solutions for most of the problems above. But there is no solution to individual thread permissions. That just isn't happening.

I hope that explains it.

Thank you.

[thegamewarden]

Fair enough. Most of that was over my head but thank you for the I depth explanation.