Development

I'd vote for the Profile's Administration section to add the 'Promote now' button, that should be the more logical place since that's already the place of Group changing tool. It could be a simple button added to the Group changing section.

Since moderators can be enabled to ban users, they should also be allowed to promote users by adding another group setting. Personally, I would love to delegate this to moderators and not have to do it myself as the administrator.

Sounds sensible, Quy. I don't think moderators can view the administration tab in users' profiles, so quite a bit of refactoring might have to be done.

Please open another ticket for this, though.

Moderators do have access to Administration tab when ban users is enabled.

I could work a bit on this today, so here's a simple question: do we provide the ability to change the User Group to any existing group (except Admin or Mod, of course), or only to the next available group through promotion? Allowing Moderators to change Groups would be simpler, but it may not be what's intended here?

Note: huh, this question would be more appropriate in #936, I mixed up tickets.

Yeah, #936 should be implemented first.

In my opinion, mods should only be able to promote users, not change their group in general.

Regarding the auto-promote functionality I posted about initially, I think anytime a new group is created with a "promote users" setting, or anytime the "promote users" setting is changed for an existing group, any users whom that change applies to should be promoted automatically.

Since we allow admins or mods to promote users manually, we'd have to make sure that those automatic changes don't *demote* any users who were manually promoted ahead of their time.

I wouldn't do it automatically, to be honest. That might not be intended.

Instead, as written in the ticket description, I'm in favor of displaying a simple link right next to the auto-promotion selector. This would be a two-step process, but wouldn't force anything down our throats.

On the other hand, of course, these users will be promoted automatically, anyway, once they make their next post.

So maybe I'm just overly careful here. I can't really come up with a realistic example of why you would not want this done automatically (and transparently, really) - what do you think?

I think it should be automatic.   As I said, as long as it doesn't undo any manual promotions.

When I upgraded to 1.5 and set my groups and promotions, I was surprised they didn't take effect immediately to be honest.  It just seems like the natural behavior.

Well, that's why we have that warning text there.

In all seriousness, I'll basically run this query:

UPDATE users SET group_id = <target_group> WHERE group_id = <source_group> AND posts >= <promotion_limit>

That should not get us into trouble, I think...

Okay, users will now automatically be promoted when configuring the promotion for a group.

What do you guys think about a - pretty visible - promotion button visible on every profile page underneath the profile menu?

I'd obviously have to style it a bit more, but I kinda like it. Just not sure whether it's a little too central for such a use case...

Moderator groups should be excluded from this feature. I don't see a case where a regular user would be promoted to a moderator group or a moderator be promoted to higher group since there isn't one.

Where you have it is definitely visible. Ticket #936 has it under Administration which is one additional click. I prefer it under Administration to keep all administrative functions in one place.

How about a text link next to or below Posts # in viewtopic? Usually, you are reading the post to determine to promote the user or not so it would be a logical location without having to go to another page to do the promotion.

Probably a good idea.

I guess that my suggestion was kind of a compromise between having it on every topic page (which I was afraid would clutter up everything) and having it barely accessible - thus putting it somewhat in reach with one click.

But your suggestion sounds sensible.

Why is promotion to Moderator groups allowed?

Do you think that's too dangerous?

Potentially yes. You can accidentally promote a regular group to a moderator group.

Personally, I would not automatically promote users to a moderator group based on number of posts. This should manually be done on a per user basis by an administrator.

You'll have to be careful with which permission you give to moderators, of course.

But in general, I'm not sure there is a huge danger!?

I'm with quy on this one. Moderator groups should not be listed in the select menu. On my website, I had selected the mod group by inadvertence.

Otherwhise, this is fixed, right?

True. We can open another ticket / forum topic if you think promoting to moderators is too dangerous.

Is this shown regardless in viewtopic.php? Would it not be better to only show it if the user is ready to be promoted but hasn't been yet?

It is only displayed when applicable.

Ah I was looking at the first if statement added in viewtopic thinking it would be there, and didn't check the second.