As designed Demoting a User Doesn't Remove Their Custom User Title

[Amaury]

Hypothetical Scenario:
You have it set up so regular members can't set a custom user title and only have the default user title or user title ladder you set for them—for argument's sake, let's say the user title is Member. The only way for them to be able to use a custom user title is if they're promoted to a staff user group, for example. They get promoted, and instead of keeping the default Staff user title by leaving the field blank, they set their own custom user title: Totally Awesome Staff Member. A few years later, they become so busy with their lives that they don't have time to be staff and file a resignation. They are then demoted, but their user title doesn't reset to Member and instead they still have the custom user title they set: Totally Awesome Staff Member.

 

[Paul B]

That is the designed behaviour - the permission is 'Edit custom title'.

Removing it just removes the ability to edit it.

 

[Amaury]

Hm. Good to know that information. Although I would think that their custom user title would be removed as well if you're demoting them to a user group that can't set a custom user title.

 

[Chris D]

A user's custom title can be set by the Admin, too.

Custom titles can be given independently of the ability to edit the custom title yourself, therefore having that permission or not should not affect your current custom title.

There's generally no expectation that having a permission or not is retroactive. A comparative example would be removing someone's permission start a conversation or post a profile post. You wouldn't expect that to delete all the conversations they have started, or profile posts they have created.

So, as Paul says, this is as designed.

 

[Amaury]

In the case of conversations, no, but I feel it's slightly different with user titles since they don't contain a lot of information and can easily be edited again should the user be promoted again, whereas conversations, generally speaking, you can't really get back, if I'm making sense. For now, then, what it comes down to is remembering to blank out the user title field when demoting someone.

Sounds like an excellent suggestion, though; however, I'll need to think about it.

 

[Chris D]

Personally speaking, I don't think it is a great suggestion.

Permissions should merely control your ability to be able to do something or not, and there shouldn't be special cases as to how that affects existing content.

It still doesn't address the point that an admin may well have deliberately intended a user to have a custom title, and changing someone's ability to change this themselves, shouldn't undo something that was done intentionally. Doing stuff like this automatically ends up being much more confusing and potentially unexpected.

 

[Amaury]

Right. Given that I'm an administrator on KH-Flare, if I were to go in and set Test User's user title to Testing Slave explicitly, then yeah, it shouldn't be removed, at least not automatically, but if Test User were a moderator, a user group with the ability to edit the user title field, and had given himself the custom user title Test Moderator, I would expect that field to be automatically blanked if I were to demote him back to the Registered user group, which doesn't have the ability to edit the user title field, with a user title of KH-Flare Member.

I don't know. Maybe I'm thinking too much here and confusing you guys.

 

[Chris D]

I'm not confused. I understand your point, but we don't track who set a custom title in that way (and we wouldn't).