[FEATURE] Option for public or closed group discussion forums

Brettflan

Active Member
We had a question from one of our users about the possibility of a closed group being able to have one of their group discussion forums open to the public.

Currently access to group discussion forums for the public (instead of strictly group members) depends solely on whether group membership is public/open or closed.
Perhaps each group discussion forum could have an option for whether it is public or private? The option could default to the existing system, public for public groups, closed for closed groups, but with the ability to switch each forum individually. A further option to restrict a forum to group staff only (not regular group members) might be another good option, so maybe making the options "Public" (default for public groups), "Members only" (default for closed groups), and "Staff only".
This would also allow public groups to have a discussion forum which is members-only or staff-only.
 
On this same subject (particularly the last line above), we would find it very useful for Public groups to have some way of restricting posting privileges within their discussion forums to only allow members to post, while still allowing anyone to view them. This would be nicest as a per-forum setting, but even a group-specific setting for all discussion forums within that group would work, or probably even just a global setting for all Public groups.

The problem we are running into is that since Public groups have no choice but to allow anyone whatsoever to post in their discussion forums, the group admins have no way to block troublesome random users who aren't members of the group from being able to keep posting.
Of course, they can ban members from the group, but that only works on members. Non-members can keep posting with no way for the group admin to prevent them.

Is this feasible?
 
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