[4280][RC3] Boards Hidden on Board Index

[JBlaze]

This could be trivial, but to me it's annoying.

If you have access to a board that is a subboard of a board you don't have access to, that board is hidden on the boardindex.

Example:

Some Board (no access)
    -> Some Subboard (access)
        -> Another Subboard (access)

Now on the boardindex, there is no way/link to access the board you can access without visiting a topic that is inside that board, then clicking on the linktree to view the board.

[Arantor]

Not sure that's really a bug, and dealing with it is somewhat awkward.

[Norv]

Interesting... I never noticed this before, nor I saw it reported.
I'd tend to agree it shouldn't behave this way (it's not exactly user-friendly).
But the thing is, it seems to be very rare, and perhaps the reason is that generally sub-boards are used for things in the same field (whatever it is) of the parent board, only more specific. And it is probably very rare that one would need to give permissions to the specific area, but feel the need to hide the general part...
I'd wonder if you could have a better layout of your forum, perhaps it could be done otherwise, using sub-boards as indeed specialized areas of a generic one.

That said, I recently met a situation where it *did* make sense to me to think at allowing sub-boards, but not the parent board.

Anyway, I'd say this is very low priority, though for usability it may be taken into account.
Tracked as 4280.

[Arantor]

How do you display child boards without a parent board, out of interest? How should it actually look?

[Norv]

Directly inside the next container.
If that's what you mean, sorry if I misunderstand.

[JBlaze]

Interesting... I never noticed this before, nor I saw it reported.
I'd tend to agree it shouldn't behave this way (it's not exactly user-friendly).
But the thing is, it seems to be very rare, and perhaps the reason is that generally sub-boards are used for things in the same field (whatever it is) of the parent board, only more specific. And it is probably very rare that one would need to give permissions to the specific area, but feel the need to hide the general part...
I'd wonder if you could have a better layout of your forum, perhaps it could be done otherwise, using sub-boards as indeed specialized areas of a generic one.

That said, I recently met a situation where it *did* make sense to me to think at allowing sub-boards, but not the parent board.

Anyway, I'd say this is very low priority, though for usability it may be taken into account.
Tracked as 4280.

mod/theme site subboard

How do you display child boards without a parent board, out of interest? How should it actually look?

Personally, I think it should just be displayed as a regular board as if it weren't even a subboard.

[Norv]

Ah, hah, good point! Yes, sure, like mod/theme sub-board.

ETA: discussion is most welcome, indeed somehow it might be "misleading" to present it as if it's directly a first class citizen. Then again, I see no other choice. (except not do it at all )

[Arantor]

No, that is sort of what I meant.

Normally, you have a row on board index being a board, plus its read indicator and last post, and with that, the child boards occupying a row in the lower area of that board's main row on the index.

Take out the row in its entirety, since the parent board is no longer visible. Now where should the children be displayed? They can't go into the next row because they're not children of the next board, nor are they children/otherwise related to a given prior parent which we can't see.

The only viable way I can see is to them display the immediate children boards as standard type boards and make sure we pick up *their* immediate children, i.e. silently promote them a level in the scheme of things.

[Norv]

That's what we all said, Arantor. What do you think could else be meant...? (by directly into the next - upper, I meant - container)

[Arantor]

Except that that's not what was said. I'm not talking about moving it to an upper container. I'm talking about it becoming a new container in its own right.

[Norv]

Example:
Container 1: Category "general"
Container 2 (counting deep levels): Board "Something secret"
Leaf 3 (rather leaf than container, currently, sort of, potential container too in reality): Board "Something visible".

I say: Leaf 3 should appear as a direct child of Container 1.
This implies: like the other children of Container 1, a "first-class" board.
You say: "no, it's not, it's a first class board instead".


Methinks we're talking about the same thing, just looking at it from a different angle.

[Arantor]

Yes, we are now talking about the same thing, though it didn't seem like that before

[[SiNaN]]

I don't see this as a bug personally. There is little to no use in forcing the child board to appear, when its parent is not around. And this tip/trick by Thantos makes me think that initially this was intentional:

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=60087.0

Edit: Fixed the link.

[Norv]

I assume [SiNaN] refers to Hiding a board without modification. 

[[SiNaN]]

Yeah, sorry, fixed the link.

[Norv]

Actually, on the current SMF 2.0, there could be a redirection board defined, visible to member groups which do see the child board of our case, which redirects to the lost child.

[emanuele]

I tend to think this is intended (and nice to have) me too.
I wouldn't change it...

[Arantor]

The problem with doing this, though, is that you need to relax the child level restriction on the board index query which has all kinds of other ramifications.

But the more I've read, the more I'm inclined not to change this behaviour in 2.x. It needs a total rethink of everything about what we do - potentially including the notion of how we present the list of boards, not just how we collect the data for them.