Add option to the feedback to prevent staff and admin feedback to be deleted

[Kristina Hoeppner]

for the discussion see http://mahara.org/interaction/forum/topic.php?id=4170

proposal:

Add an institution option (I would not make it a general site option but allow institutions to decide that) which would disable the deleting of staff and admin feedback on pages and artefacts.

This should not just happen on submitted pages to a course group but on any feedback that a staff member or admin leaves.

[Kevin Lawrence (klawrenceym)]

We are using Mahara to record learners progress through their course. A major issue we have come across is that learners are removing feedback from their views, especially if the feedback doesn't suit them. This feedback is an impoortant part of the verification process and needs to be in place for awarding body verifiers. Is there any way of preventing learners from removing feedback, or are there plans to introduce such a concept in a future version.

[adriaan vorster (adriaanvor)]

Hi
I have a similar requirement to divide user rights in respect of a repository.
I have an academic environment in which there is an Academic Manager that oversees education. The learning is managed by more than one academic supervisor and naturally we have a student that participates in this effort as well.
The learning is structured to have documents that form the basis of the progress and evaluation and these documents has to be version and life cycle managed.
The idea is that there will be a dedicated academic space in which documents could be created and collaboratively worked on, and regularly presented for evaluation, but that only one party, the Academic Manager, will have delete rights on this space.
As the academic repository content will be used for academic evaluation and progress the essence of the requirement is to have a digital space that allows all authorised participants to have controlled access, create and read rights, but that only a designated party could have delete rights.
Is this possible within the Mahara environment?
How would I be able to set up such functionality?
Thanks

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hi Adriaan,

As your question goes away from the actual wishlist item here, I created a new wishlist item at https://bugs.launchpad.net/mahara/+bug/980428 Please add any comments over there.

Cheers
Kristina

[Christian Kleinhanss (kleinhanss)]

I would like to be able to sitch this function on or off not only on institution lever, but down to group level.

[Pete Potter (petepotter)]

I would like to see this added. Its a feature that I've spoken to users about a few times over the last 12 months.

Cheers
Pete

[Marion MacDonald (marion-macdonald)]

This affects me also. Has anything happened about this since 2013 that I might have missed?

Regards
Marion

[Aaron Wells (u-aaronw)]

Hi Marion,

No, we haven't implemented this yet. The closest we've come, is that if you delete a comment, Mahara displays a placeholder that says "Comment by X deleted". So at least you can tell that the teacher made a comment and the student deleted it.

I think this feature, the ability to prevent staff comments from being deleted, would be a good idea. But it's not currently on our plans at Mahara HQ, so it's unlikely to be implemented anytime soon unless someone funds it specifically, or contributes an implementation for it.

Cheers,
Aaron

[Robert Lyon (robertl-9)]

If we are going to be adding the ability to stop staff feedback from being deleted by the page/artefact owner (or other admins) then we will need to differentiate the comments from normal ones somehow, possibly with a different colour/style to make it obvious to the user the reason why they don't have the 'delete' button any more for particular comments

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

An earlier idea was to use a small icon to identify staff / admin. If it's only color, we might have accessibility issues and there wouldn't be any indicator to why it's in a different color.

I could imagine even just having "Staff" / "Administrator" underneath the profile picture instead of an icon which requires a hover which is not available on mobile.

[Fiona (f-macneill)]

I have a use case where it would be helpful for no users to be able to delete comments as the portfolios can never be public and always need an audit trail. It would be helpful to have a setting to turn off comment deletion at institutional level and I am wondering how I could go about working on that or sponsoring that? Sorry that I don't know the process! I have been an admin on Mahara for many years, but recently I have been trying to get more involved in the community.

[Kristina Hoeppner (kris-hoeppner)]

Hi Fiona,

Thank you for wanting to get more involved in the Mahara community and for posting your use case. I'll send you an email with details on how you can sponsor a feature.

Alternatively, if you'd like to work on it yourself, we can set up a time to discuss what that setting could look like.

Cheers
Kristina