Thanks Snog - I get that. My suggestion is meant to be a check on a member changing the status of a thread to public when it could be harmful to one or more participating members.
So, when a thread starter wants to change the status to public, instead of it happening instantly, a dialogue box would open and ask for a reason for changing the status. That would cause an alert for administrators with permission to "approve status changes" to view the private thread and determine if it's "safe" to convert it to a public thread. There would be an approve, ignore, and deny button for them to push depending on the situation.
I see. I'll put it on the wish list as a option.
And just as an FYI, this was originally developed for a site that has high profile producers, directors, actors, models, photographers, etc. present on the site (sorry, no name dropping is going to come from me). It is used mostly for detailed discussions about projects and scheduling who needs to be where and when. And using PCs to do that would be cumbersome since once someone's services are no longer needed they need to be removed from the discussion. Any of that information leaking out could be disastrous for the project. That is why the thread starter (usually a producer or director) has full control over the thread.
I saw a possibility that other sites may need something like this, that's why the public release. Anything to do with control over the thread will most likely always be an option, not a requirement.
And the option to change a public thread to a private thread was suggested above. So I automatically did the opposite to go with it. So, I'm sure it can use some improvement.
