Interesting public/private forum visibility bug (or feature?)

Posted by Marc Martin on
URL: https://support.nabble.com/Interesting-public-private-forum-visibility-bug-or-feature-tp7590725.html

Hi all,

I just encountered some forum behavior that was a bit unexpected, so I'll pass it along here.

I'm setting up a forum that has public and private sub-forums.  At the top level, I'm using "category".

I've set up different access groups -- let's say, in addition to "Registered" and "Members" I've also got "Private" and "Super Private".  Where "Super Private" is a subset of the people who are in "Private".

So then I've got my sub-forums ordered like this:

  sub-forum 1 (public)
  sub-forum 2 (private)
  sub-forum 3 (super private)

And then I test it out and it all works as expected.  

However, if I reorder the sub-forums to be like this instead:

  sub-forum 1 (public)
  sub-forum 3 (super private)
  sub-forum 2 (private)

Then I get the unexpected behavior -- people who are in the "private" group can no longer view sub-forum 2 on the main page, even though they have been given permission to view it.  It would appear that they cannot see any sub-forums after they reach a sub-forum that they aren't supposed to view.  In this case, they don't have permission to see sub-forum 3 (super private), which is blocking their ability to view sub-forum 2 because sub-forum 2 is ordered after sub-forum 3.

This problem only occurs on the "Main Page".  If I go to "Topics View", then the person in the "private" group can see all of the posts in sub-forum 2.