Split of post approval permissions

[Robert.]

When post moderation is enabled, members who are able to approve posts, can post without post approval. I'd love to see a new permission for posting without post approval, because letting someone approve posts doesn't mean you automatically want them to be able to post without post approval.

[Arantor]

Make sure to have it so that people who can approve, can't approve their own unapproved topics.

[Kindred]

yeah... it seems confusing, but I believe the permissions already can do exactly this...

[Arantor]

No, they can't. Right to approve trumps the others.

It's why I actually gutted that part of SMF in Wedge, because it isn't otherwise possible to force even staff member topics to be approved, though currently I haven't finished all that.

[Kindred]

are you sure?

Post new topics, without requiring approval          
Post new topics, but hide until approved          
Post replies to topics, but hide until approved
   Own topic:          
   Any topic:          
Post replies to topics, without requiring approval
   Own topic:          
   Any topic:

and then

Approve items awaiting moderation

I have not used that specific set... so I can't confirm...
but are you saying that "Approve items..." overrides the "... hide until approved" settings and makes any user able to approve also not require apporval?

[emanuele]

I assume so, since I doubt that while doing the approval SMF checks if the user approving the post is also the author of the post itself that is approving his own post. And that makes useless to separate the permissions (that is the reason of Arantor's comment).

[Arantor]

Correct, that's exactly it, Kindred.

If you can approve posts, you can see all unmoderated posts and you can approve any in the board for which you have permission, regardless of ownership.

Just for good measure, you can't even split it into own and any, because any overrides even own being denied.

[Kindred]

hmmmm.....  given that, I don't think this is something that can be easily addressed with the current system....  it would require a re-write of the entire approval permissions and possibly the smf permissions design.

not saying it's a bad idea... just saying that it seems that, as you noted with wedge, it would have to be completely re-written, not just patched.

[Arantor]

I've been steadily moving it towards not being permission based if I can at all help it

For those wondering what I did do, http://wedge.org/blog/7090/back-in-the-saddle/ discusses it - I essentially revamped it not to be based on permissions but define a set of rules and conditions by which moderation will be applied - even admins' posts will be moderated unless they exclude themselves in the rules. (It's not perfect but it's the best I could think of!)

I haven't yet figured out how best to handle approval permissions, but I'll figure it out sometime.