Get rid of primary group?

[Jake Bunce]

Since primary and secondary groups are functionally identical in XenForo, why separate them?

Discuss.

 

[Shockrift]

I have yet to experiment with xenforo usergroups though I assume the concept is the same as those on vbulletin which i've used for years.

simply put a primary usergroup is for main permissions (admin, moderator, normal, unregistered). a secondary is used for tweaks to the first so an 'unvalidated email' user can be part of unregistered yet have slightly more legroom to breathe and messages to view (eg. is_member_of()) until they validate themselves. this of course is not limited to one secondary group but multiple which has been a great boon to addon-developers within that framework and moderator/admins within certain communities where customization drives the community to greater levels of posting or solidarity.

getting rid of the secondary would undo about 5 years of improvements to forum communities imho.

 

[Divvens]

I don't use secondary groups in Xenforo. Though Brogan says that all members primary user group should be registered, it isn't feasible for me in Xenforo currently due to:

1) My forums uses rank images (pip icons/w.e). So instead of a title for a rank, we use images. Currently Xenforo doesn't support images for that.
2) To achieve what I want I have to use <xen if> tags in the user post bit, and and have new groups for every rank. The rank icon doesn't show up if the user is in a secondary group.
3) If I add the images via acp as user title for that group, I'd have to disallow custom user titles for members. I don't want to do that, I allow certain user groups to edit their user title and if I have a image there the image will be removed after a edit of custom user title. So that option is ruled out.

Due to these reasons, secondary groups are completely useless for my forums. I just hope that the group promotions coming for 1.1 promotes from group to group rather than adding the promoted group to secondary.

So at least for me, primary groups is being used and not secondary

 

[Shockrift]

Due to these reasons, secondary groups are completely useless for my forums. I just hope that the group promotions coming for 1.1 promotes from group to group rather than adding the promoted group to secondary.

Since this is an upcoming feature we can only assume. However, ideally there should be an option of overriding existing group or adding to secondary therein.

This is perhaps a separate issue altogether.

 

[James]

I never thought about this actually... Jake's got a point. There are no differences between primary and secondary. User group mark-up depends on the display style priority and permissions are cumulative anyway.

Get rid of primary group!

 

[Shockrift]

I still hold that a primary usergroup is for the structure and secondary for the quick modifications. with promotions or whatever they're called here it allows for certain actions to correspond with these modifications rather than have to redefine your overarching structure across several usergroups. You hit on the keyword 'cumulative' whereby several no's and one yes = yes and therefore a user can be associated with however many groups they need be and screw a default group but there is a social norm that accompanies these groups: 'moderator, admin, normal/registered' that potentially would be disturbed by this.. the keyword here is 'display usergroup'. If several usergroups are toggled as 'display usergroups' (assuming we get rid of primary) how would the potential conflict be resolved? (xenforo's use of titles 'new member', 'well-known member' etc might render the whole question pointless, im unsure as i haven't used xenforo much)