Archive Access

[Eluvatar]

Some topics that were originally public such as this one are apparently invisible not only to guests but also to Residents and presumably Members and Foreign Envoys.

(The topic in question is an old embassy applications topic for March 24, 2011 to October 11, 2012.)

My intuition would be that the archive areas for public government areas should themselves be almost entirely public. I believe there was a decision made to hide the archives from Guests, but I'm not certain what the reasons for it were. I do think, however, that at the very least Citizens, Residents, and Foreign Envoys should be free to peruse the archives of our public affairs.

Before I make any changes though, I'd like to bring this up for a broader discussion. What criteria should we, as administrators, seek to follow to best serve the government and greater community?

 

[r3naissanc3r]

My general rule when it comes to archives is that threads in them should have at least as broad permissions as in their original location.

In most cases, the permissions should be identical. The cases where the permissions in the archive location should be broader (the thread becomes accessible to more people than it used to) is when a thread is "declassified".

Guests are a special category and I can see valid reasons that they may be exempted from the above rule of thumb. But for all other usergroups, I think the policy I described above would be advisable.

 

[Grimalkin]

Posting per Eluvatar, there are several threads that are unaccessible to my current mask group, such as those pertaining to particular amendments of the constitution (clicking on them from the constitution page).

 

[Eluvatar]

Yeah, old voting topics were public when they weren't archived, so as r3n says I'm quite certain they should remain accessible to at least non-Guests.

 

[Eluvatar]

I went and gave out some permissions to the Archives.

Permissions I left out:

- I did not add to Guest permissions.
- I did not grant access to the Security Council archives, (the non-private ones) though I will if there is no objection soon.