Permissions system UI could be improved #7593
Description
SMF's permissions system is quite powerful, but not always easy for admins to understand. The UI could be improved to help with this in future versions of SMF.
- It would be good to change the current "Allowed" and "Disallowed" permission labels to something like "Granted" and "Not granted." Admins often get confused about the difference between disallowed and denied, and that is probably due at least in part to the fact that SMF is using the word "disallowed" incorrectly and misleadingly. In normal English usage, to disallow something means to reject or forbid it. If I say that something is disallowed, I am not merely saying that permission has not been explicitly granted; rather, I am saying that permission has been explicitly denied. So if we use a more neutral term like "not granted," people might find it easier to understand how the permissions system works.
- Several permissions have "... without requiring approval" and "... but hide until approved" versions. Internally, SMF stores these as separate permissions, which works well. But in the UI, having two separate versions of these permissions is confusing. For example, instead of showing both "Post new topics, without requiring approval" and "Post new topics, but hide until approved," it would be better to just show a single "Post new topics" permission with "Granted," "Require moderator approval," and "Not granted" options (as well as "Denied" if the deny permissions option is enabled, of course). We would just need to present a select menu with these options, like we already do when the deny permissions option is enabled, and to add some simple logic in the relevant places in ManagePermissions.php to handle "moderate" as a possible form value.