Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: closed forum vs disabled forum

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Posted by Emmanuelle Raffenne on
Hi Torben,

I agree with you that it's not consistent with the OpenACS standard use of the terms, I was just stating the current situation. It looks like the use case for the forum policy, and probably the specific need the policy has been implemented for, is different and so is the meaning of "closed" in there (quick fix: rename "closed" to "read-only" :). I understand it as a "posting policy", not an enrollment one.

In the .LRN context a forum inherits the permissions of the club or class it belongs to, and an user won't be able to access the forum unless she's a member of the club or class. Members access to a forum within a club/class can be set/refined using permissions.

I guess that "posting policy" has been added in the first place to provide a way to moderate forums, which can't be done using the permission system AFAIK. But I agree with you that the "open" and "closed" policies duplicate or can be done using permissions.

I think that whatever we decide to do, the behavior should be consistent at least inside forum. For .LRN 2.4.1, since the policy function is used, it has to be applied correctly and we need to fix it. It would be nice though to work on cleaning it up for 5.5