[RFC] Remove unnecessary permissions

[Oleg]

I think the question here is whether we want to remove meaningful, if obscure, permissions vs only removing permissions that make no sense and/or are entirely pointless.

I am not yet comfortable removing meaningful permissions. The pointless ones I can merge.

[imkingdavid]

I think the question here is whether we want to remove meaningful, if obscure, permissions vs only removing permissions that make no sense and/or are entirely pointless.

I am not yet comfortable removing meaningful permissions. The pointless ones I can merge.

To which ones are you referring as meaningful? I can add them back if need be. I'm not overly attached to removing any specific ones, I just went ahead and removed the ones that didn't seem necessary to me. If they are still meaningful, they can be re-added.

[brunoais]

Removed:

• f_subscribe - "Can subscribe forum" - Why should users be disallowed to subscribe?

This does make sense to keep. But not in this form. I believe this should be kept in the form of:
Users can subscribe to receive e-mail.
You may want that, caused by server limitations, that some users shouldn't be able to subscribe to receive e-mail for new posts as it might overload the e-mail system of the server (some free servers only allow to send 3 e-mail per minute) and open it to other purposes.

• u_savedrafts - "Can save drafts" - if you can post/send PM, you can save a draft - NOTE: Instead of this permission, it now checks for (f_post || f_reply) in posting.php (u_sendpm || u_pm_reply) in pm-related files.

This does make sense in some situations to prevent some users of "over create" drafts and abuse this system creating too many drafts for them and fill the forum DB with lots and lots and lots of drafts. The forum can become full before the admins can even understand what happened actually.
This can be replaced with a draft limiter. E.g. a user can only create a max of 20 drafts. This way each user won't use more than some KB for drafts and won't just fill the subsystem with drafts.(if there's already something about this I can't find).


For all the other permissions in the OP, I agree.

[MichaelC]

Removed:

• f_subscribe - "Can subscribe forum" - Why should users be disallowed to subscribe?

This does make sense to keep. But not in this form. I believe this should be kept in the form of:
Users can subscribe to receive e-mail.
You may want that, caused by server limitations, that some users shouldn't be able to subscribe to receive e-mail for new posts as it might overload the e-mail system of the server (some free servers only allow to send 3 e-mail per minute) and open it to other purposes.

• u_savedrafts - "Can save drafts" - if you can post/send PM, you can save a draft - NOTE: Instead of this permission, it now checks for (f_post || f_reply) in posting.php (u_sendpm || u_pm_reply) in pm-related files.

This does make sense in some situations to prevent some users of "over create" drafts and abuse this system creating too many drafts for them and fill the forum DB with lots and lots and lots of drafts. The forum can become full before the admins can even understand what happened actually.
This can be replaced with a draft limiter. E.g. a user can only create a max of 20 drafts. This way each user won't use more than some KB for drafts and won't just fill the subsystem with drafts.(if there's already something about this I can't find).


For all the other permissions in the OP, I agree.

Disable subscriptions board wide?

To be honest, 300 drafts would barely make a dent in the DB size, I don't think its a worry.

[brunoais]

Disable subscriptions board wide?

This is about boardwide? If it's about a permission to the whole board then delete it. I don't believe anyone would need that.
I think this deserved to be user based. This is, something useful to disable when the board can be overloaded with sent e-mails.

To be honest, 300 drafts would barely make a dent in the DB size, I don't think its a worry.

Really? How about 2000? No limit can be a problem, sometimes. We could just make a hidden option that limits the number to 100 per user. When adding a new draft after the no 100 we start by deleting the older and replacing with the newer and also apply a max year old for the drafts. If they are older they are pruned. Something like that. Comments?

[MichaelC]

Disable subscriptions board wide?

This is about boardwide? If it's about a permission to the whole board then delete it. I don't believe anyone would need that.
I think this deserved to be user based. This is, something useful to disable when the board can be overloaded with sent e-mails.

To be honest, 300 drafts would barely make a dent in the DB size, I don't think its a worry.

Really? How about 2000? No limit can be a problem, sometimes. We could just make a hidden option that limits the number to 100 per user. When adding a new draft after the no 100 we start by deleting the older and replacing with the newer and also apply a max year old for the drafts. If they are older they are pruned. Something like that. Comments?

No, I pointed out if people were worried about email subscription impeding on board load they could disable the site-wide.

Beyond the scope of this RFC. This is about a permission, not a limit.

[N@te]

Hello everybody,

I am nobody special, just a long time user and admin of phpBB, and I would first off like to say that I appreciate the work all of you put into this. However, I would like to point out that I don't think we are considering privacy enough, specifically, when it comes to u_pm_printpm, u_pm_emailpm, and u_pm_forwardpm. What if a user doesn't want their PMs to be exposed to other people? After all, they're called private messages for a reason. And yes, I realize printing, emailing, and forwarding PMs would still easily be possible even if the buttons weren't present, but why make it easier for people to do so when some users may not want their information spread around the forum?

Furthermore, if printing, emailing, and forwarding PMs is to be enabled by user discretion, then perhaps all three of these should be removed from the ACP and put into the UCP under Board preferences, with an option that reads something along the lines of, "Users can forward, email, and print your PMs." Yes, I also realize that you are no longer accepting new RFCs, but I think my idea would be a good implementation if these permissions were to be removed from the ACP. More power to the users.

Really? How about 2000? No limit can be a problem, sometimes. We could just make a hidden option that limits the number to 100 per user. When adding a new draft after the no 100 we start by deleting the older and replacing with the newer and also apply a max year old for the drafts. If they are older they are pruned. Something like that. Comments?

To me, it would make more sense to just prevent users from creating another draft altogether, so that way they don't go back looking for a draft they saved a while back and realize it has vanished. Or at least warn the users before their drafts are automatically deleted.

[naderman]

Yes, I also realize that you are no longer accepting new RFCs, but I think my idea would be a good implementation if these permissions were to be removed from the ACP. More power to the users.

Why would you think that? New RFCs are welcome any time.

Regarding your general proposal though, as far as permissions go that makes little sense, as only the board admin can then decide who gets to forward/print/email what. Which has nothing to do with the wishes of an individual user for a PM. Since technically all of those can always be done anyway, there is really no point in having a permission for those. It just makes it an annoyance for users if some admin disabled these. For the same reason I'd also be against introducing such settings for users, but that really is outside the scope of this particular RFC.

[Pony99CA]

David and I apparently have dueling RFCs. My Improved Subscription Options RFC expands upon the Can subscribe forum permission.

Anyway, I'm confused about the Can subscribe forum permission. I tried setting it to Never on my test board, and links to subscribe to the forum and topics were still there. Maybe something on my test board is screwed up, though (I know that I have one or two odd problems).

So how is Can subscribe forum supposed to work? The way I interpret it, if I don't have that permission, I won't get a Subscribe forum link displayed at the bottom of the forum listing, but should still get Subscribe topic links in the topics in that forum.

However, if "forum" is treated more broadly, it could mean that I should not be able to have any subscriptions at all in the forum -- not to the forum, not to topics that I haven't posted in and not to topics that I have posted in.

If it means the former, then I see no reason to remove it; let the admin decide if he wants users to be able to subscribe to the forum. If it means the latter, I still wouldn't remove it, but I would change it to behave like the former.

In other words, I should always be able to subscribe to topics that I posted in or am interested in, but perhaps not subscribe to the forum and all topics at once.

Also, what happens if I have subscriptions and that permission gets revoked? Do all of my subscriptions disappear or am I only prevented from creating new subscriptions? if the former, that's an interesting way to cancel a user's subscriptions administratively (although why somebody would do that is another question); if the latter, that means that I should still have Unsubscribe forum and Unsubscribe topic links displayed for my existing subscriptions, but if I do unsubscribe, I won't get the subcription links back.

Steve