[development] Moderation bit behavior

[Dries Buytaert]

On 04 Jul 2006, at 17:11, Neil Drumm wrote:
> Right now we have an inconsistency with our moderation bit. Is it
> supposed to control the visibility of posts, or is that solely  
> dependent
> on status? 13 queries say it should have an effect and /up to/ 38
> queries say no.
>
> The issue for this is over at http://drupal.org/node/71730.
>
> I think the underlying problem may be that published (status) is not
> mutually exclusive with moderation.

The original context of the moderate bit is the queue.module.  With  
the queue.module, nodes that have both the moderate and published bit  
set were shown to authenticated users, but not to anonymous users.   
Nowadays we have node-level permission, something which wasn't  
avaiable when I originally wrote the queue.module.  If the same can  
be achieved with a node-level permission module (and I think it can),  
it is probably best to take the moderation bit behind the barn, and  
to shoot it through the head.  It's been a pain for years.  :-)

Taking out the moderation bit should be both easy, fun and  
rewarding.  SQL queries get less expensive, the user experience is  
likely to get better, and the code becomes easier to grok.

Maybe check with the workflow people; I believe they had some  
concrete suggestions about this.  Either way, the workflow people  
figured out a mechanism to build arbitrary workflows with complex  
transition schemes, and I'm pretty sure they don't need the moderate  
bit for that.  The workflow module is the way forward.

--
Dries Buytaert  ::  http://www.buytaert.net/