Private visibility option for threads

[ignuF]

Hello MCM, today I bring to you one of my most recent thoughts on how users are able to change the option of whether a thread can be viewed publicly or set privately for personal use.

MCM users should have the option to create a thread, and then be able to set whether or not everyone can view it or only the specific user, as well as mcm staff (for safety and security reasons). I have taken this idea from YouTube, and how your able to change your videos visibility between Private, Unlisted, or Public.

I have no idea how hard it'll be for dev's to make this system work (I know absolutely nothing about coding)

 

[Harry]

Hello MCM, today I bring to you one of my most recent thoughts on how users are able to change the option of whether a thread can be viewed publicly or set privately for personal use.

MCM users should have the option to create a thread, and then be able to set whether or not everyone can view it or only the specific user, as well as mcm staff (for safety and security reasons). I have taken this idea from YouTube, and how your able to change your videos visibility between Private, Unlisted, or Public.

I have no idea how hard it'll be for dev's to make this system work (I know absolutely nothing about coding)

There's already the Thread Draft section, where the threads you create are only visible by yourself. That seems partly what you're suggesting but wouldn't allow only certain people to view it. You could just DM/group DM though if you wanted to limit the reach to certain members, and you have basically the same functionality as a thread?

The idea of an unlisted thread, where you can only view the thread if you have the URL, isn't a good idea in this scenario, as the ID system for threads is sequential (meaning you can just add one to the ID at the top and navigate to a different thread, instead of them being random - never understood why XenForo did this).

 

[Mick]

Personally, I do understand the benefit of adding this sort of functionality. It could be useful to artists or other service providers to be able to completely hide their thread during times that they are closed rather than just locking it and leaving a message because inevitably people will still add them and ask for their service.

I think that this could make quite a nice feature for our Ultimate users to have as a perk of the upgrade, but would love more feedback from people if you think this could be useful. TechBanana and Ellie, I know you regularly build up a queue and then close your shops, could you see the utility in a feature like this?

 

[Ellie]

Personally, I do understand the benefit of adding this sort of functionality. It could be useful to artists or other service providers to be able to completely hide their thread during times that they are closed rather than just locking it and leaving a message because inevitably people will still add them and ask for their service.

I think that this could make quite a nice feature for our Ultimate users to have as a perk of the upgrade, but would love more feedback from people if you think this could be useful. TechBanana and Ellie, I know you regularly build up a queue and then close your shops, could you see the utility in a feature like this?

If it’s possible to make the thread completely private then yes I would definitely utilise this when I have to close my shop to avoid frustration.

How would this be implemented? Would the thread just be private so you’d get an error message upon clicking or would the thread be unlisted?

 

[Mick]

If it’s possible to make the thread completely private then yes I would definitely utilise this when I have to close my shop to avoid frustration.

How would this be implemented? Would the thread just be private so you’d get an error message upon clicking or would the thread be unlisted?

If a thread was set as private I was thinking that it would remain in the forum, but it would not be visible to anyone other than staff and the creator of the thread. I'm not sure how it'd work with stickies, but that'd have to be ironed out before implementation.

 

[Ellie]

If a thread was set as private I was thinking that it would remain in the forum, but it would not be visible to anyone other than staff and the creator of the thread. I'm not sure how it'd work with stickies, but that'd have to be ironed out before implementation.

You read my mind, perhaps if it’s a sticky you could get an error message pop up explaining it has been set to private for the time being.
Otherwise there could be confusion over how many active sticky threads there are.

 

[ignuF]

You read my mind, perhaps if it’s a sticky you could get an error message pop up explaining it has been set to private for the time being.
Otherwise there could be confusion over how many active sticky threads there are.

Exactly my thought!

 

[Mick]

At the moment we aren't planning to do any more development for our site until we can migrate to XF2 since we'll have to rewrite everything then. Perhaps once we move to XF2 and have fixed all the bugs that come with that and have more time for some new development we can work on this, but for the moment this isn't something that we can justify the development for.

Denied, thank you for the suggestion.