So far I've created an All_Members group with all full members, a Jury Room group, and an RP ID group.
Groups let you set permissions for an entire group at once, and change a user's permissions by just adding them to or deleting them from the group.
Until now all permissions have been set for each member individually, which means clicking through eight or ten boxes for viewing, reading, writing, editing, deleting. . . for each of our subforums.
I've discovered that any granted permission overrides any permission not granted--if someone has individual permission to read a forum, the fact that a group they're part of does not doesn't affect their ability to read the forum.
So, when someone needs access to the Jury Room, we add them to the Jury Room group, and the permissions granted there override their individual lack of permission. When they're done, we remove them from that group, and their permissions are automatically gone.
RP IDs are added to the RP ID group instead of All_Members, and this gives them permissions just for There and Back Again.
I would like to propose two changes to how we have been doing things:
- 1. Grant all permissions through groups. This would eliminate errors and discrepancies I've seen in the individual permissions. It would mean, though, that admins would have to click through everyone one last time, turning off all their permissions (except for special cases I'll note next). We would turn on all the standard permissions in the All_Members group first, so there would be no "outages" for members.
2. Add three new groups. These should not be visible on the front page, I think.
One would be Special Permissions. This would be for any special cases such as members restricted from a forum by a jury verdict, or Jnyusa, who has special additional access in a couple of spots to help her with her constitution work. All permissions for this group would be set to "off." A member restricted from a forum would be removed from All_Members, added to this group, and have the special set of permissions set by hand.
The second would be BikeRacks. This would allow quick restriction of a member to the BikeRacks under the circumstances noted in the charter. The member would be removed from All_Members and added to this group, which has permissions only for the BikeRacks.
The third would be England. Thinking of England permissions in All_Members would be off, of course. We would add all members who want to see England to this group, in addition to All_Members. Permissions for England would be "on" for this group. This would also involve admins drawiing up lists of who already has access to England and adding them to this group.
Opinions? Suggestions?