Force users to view discussion

ctml

Is anyone aware of any extension that can force users to view discussions? Example: force users to view the Community Guidelines discussion, or announcements, etc.

clarkwinkelmann

ctml how would that work?

You could create an extension to redirect the user to a page after login.

You could also create a variation of the Terms extension that requires the user to visit a page before they can check the policy and enable their account. Though this might not make them read any more of the terms than just putting the link next to a checkbox, they might still just scroll through the page and accept without reading.

Also, pinned discussions stay at the top of the discussion list until read, so that's also a pretty good incentive for users to mark them as read. But again, there's no way of forcing the user to actually read it.

ctml

clarkwinkelmann how would that work?

You could create an extension to redirect the user to a page after login.

I think it would be along those lines. I think ideally, it would be per discussion if read status is tracked in core (or maybe that's only provided with your who read extension).

But for most use cases I think redirect after login would suffice. However I don't know if that would cause issues with Masquerade since that also redirects one to their profile for obligatory fields after first sign on. Anyways, interesting to think about but sounds like there is no current extension for this. Appreciate your thoughts.

clarkwinkelmann

ctml if read status is tracked in core

Yes, read status is a core feature. My own extension only shows the status already managed by Flarum.

ctml However I don't know if that would cause issues with Masquerade

That's definitely the problem of redirect-based solutions. If you have multiple kinds of redirects after registration or login, you will need a way to make them work together. This issue also exists with extensions that open a modal at page load, for example the fof/terms update modal together with my Wordpress extension welcome message.

If it's unlikely to have both redirects at the same time, and if they don't block forum access, it's usually not too big of a deal. One of the redirects will work, and next time the user logs in or refreshes the page they might see the second redirect. If however the user account is disabled, this could lead to confusion.

That's why the solution in fof/terms and others of my extensions is actually to disable the user account, show a banner at the top of the website, and then attempt redirecting or opening a modal. If the redirect or modal doesn't work, the message at the top of the website still provides an explanation and a link/button to perform the action again.