Group Requests: History and Accountability

[Arantor]

I don't know every aspect of SMF as well as I'd like, especially the stuff I don't use often (but remember, it's 110k lines of code across several tens of tables!)

And today I discovered that requestable groups just delete the request once resolved. So if User A applies to join a group and it's accepted, they're just moved. (It's possible, but somewhat unlikely, that the change will be logged in the profile log) Or if the request is denied, nothing happens.

Nothing, that is, except the request is deleted. There is no history of requests made by a user, no history of whether those requests were accepted or denied, nor even accountability - if a user is promoted and it shouldn't have been done, there's no log to say *who* approved the change. (Under the right circumstances it might be in the profile log but that's not a good get-out clause)

I'd like to see that get fixed in SMF so the history of requests for a user is maintained, perhaps even visible from their account if you're a suitable moderator and can see if they've made multiple requests over time etc.

[Kindred]

hmmmm.... I'm note sure if this is a feature request or a bug fix  --- we log everything else, it seems strange that we would not log requests like this.

[Arantor]

Oh, it's not merely an oversight. The code is very clear on this point, log_group_requests doesn't even have columns to store resolution status, and the code comment even says about how it's 'removing the evidence'.

So it's not technically a bug report because it is how it was designed but I'd certainly argue it needs amendment.

[Arantor]

Tracked as https://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1/issues/969 (and moving to 'accepted')