[drupal-devel] Permissions aren't transparent

[Gerhard Killesreiter]

On Mon, 18 Apr 2005, Dries Buytaert wrote:

>
> On 18 Apr 2005, at 14:09, Gerhard Killesreiter wrote:
> > foo_perm() {
> >   return array('create foo', 'admin foo');
> > }
> >
> > is the current structure.
> >
> > foo_perm() {
> >   return array('create foo' => t('Lets you create nodes of type foo.'),
> >                'admin foo' => t('Lets you administer nodes of type
> > foo.')
> >               );
> > }
> >
>
> As an alternative solution, we could stick to the current
> implementation but make the names of the permissions more verbose.

I don't think that is going to be good enough.

> > The idea is to not only display the additional blurb on the admin
> > permission page, but also on a sub tab of the user profile pages (or
> > directly on /user/n).
>
> I honestly can't think of any site that displays a user his or her
> permissions.

Are you trying to say you lack imagination? ;)

> Do you get to see your permissions on amazon.com, ebay.com,
> slashdot.org, cnn.com?

No, but does that say it is a bad idea?

> While I could make sense to display one's roles, I'm sceptic about
> displaying individual permissions.

Displaying roles is only usefull if you know what your membership of a
role implies.

>  Or were you only going to display these permissions to the
> administrator?

That too.

> Sure we are trying to fix a problem here?

Yes. I think that the average non-technical Drupal site is a bit
underused. I think this is because users (if they aren't familiar with
Drupal or with dynamical websites in general) simply don't know that a
Drupal site is not only a "read this" site but can also be a "do that"
site.

There might be several ways to make users more aware of the features a
Drupal site offers and I think that this idea is not too bad.

But if you don't like the idea at all, I will go ahead with my original
plan to make this a contrib module.

Cheers,
	Gerhard