More granular permissions for creating public pages

[Kristina Hoeppner]

Currently, you can only either have public pages for all or none at all (per institution), but cannot say that for example only admins and staff can create public pages or other trusted users. This is a problem not just on mahara.org where we would like for users to create public pages when we trust them, i.e. aren't spammers, but also for schools when they want teachers to be able to create public pages, but not necessarily first graders.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

This also means that there should be a differentiation who is allowed to make a profile page public or not. Currently, you can decide that on the site level, but that is not granular enough.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

This could also be tied in to the new user probation system (https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/1252101 ), so that probationary users can't create public pages.

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

On mahara.org I've implemented a prototype system to restrict the ability of probationary user to create public pages. It still needs some cleaning up.

It sounds like there are a few different categories of people we think might be allowed to create public pages (or profiles):
 - all users
 - probationary users
 - staff
 - admins
 - institutional staff
 - institutional admins

We're heading down that slippery slope towards an atomic permissions system like Moodle. ;)

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

"We're heading down that slippery slope towards an atomic permissions system like Moodle. ;)"

This looks like it esp. on sites that serve a wide range of users where institutions want to have more control. More control = more regulation = more permission settings.