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openedx / frontend-app-discussions

A React-based micro frontend for the Open edX discussion forums.
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Course discussion is accessible by beta testers before course start date #709

Open mariajgrimaldi opened 5 months ago

mariajgrimaldi commented 5 months ago

Steps to Reproduce

1- Maker a course start date on 3 June 2024 2- Set the "Days early for beta users" to 5 3- Add the user as beta tester 4- Navigate to openedx using beta tester 5- Observe that the Discussion forum is displayed and the beta tester can add posts 2024-05-29_19-09-47

Original issue: https://github.com/openedx/wg-build-test-release/issues/372

mariajgrimaldi commented 5 months ago

Test in the redwood sandbox:

Screencast from 02-06-24 18:55:07 - Beta Tester Discussions - Redwood.webm

Test in the quince sandbox:

Screencast from 02-06-24 18:54:03 - Beta Tester Discussions - Quince.webm

mariajgrimaldi commented 5 months ago

FYI @arbrandes @brian-smith-tcril @openedx/2u-infinity

mariajgrimaldi commented 3 months ago

As I reported above, this issue also happens in quince. Do you know if this has always worked this way, although the documentation says otherwise?

cc @jmakowski1123 @crathbun428

sarina commented 2 months ago

@mariajgrimaldi is there documentation you're finding that states this behavior, or is this a test in the testing spreadsheet? I don't know what I'd consider the "correct" behavior to be.

crathbun428 commented 2 months ago

Sorry - can I confirm I understand the bug, correctly? The issue is that if a beta tester is added before the N days before they're able to access course-related stuff, that user can log in and add discussion posts for the course earlier than that?

I'm not sure if this issue has always existed. I took a look at docs and it doesn't seem to mention beta testers and access to the discussion posts, but maybe I missed this?

I wonder if this is something we'll want to capture related to RBAC work? The beta testers can see x, y, z things only after the days set by the course author or course staff member.

sarina commented 2 months ago

The question is what is the requirement- yes, this should be captured for RBAC work, but if this is the wrong behavior, it can be fixed now.

If no one knows what the right behavior is, I'm inclined to say it shouldn't be changed.

marcotuts commented 2 months ago

Learners can be granted access to a course before it starts, but I forget what configuration does that. Beta Testers I thought got 2 weeks (or N weeks) or early access, but the default might be that access is at course start for all learners, so beta testers would be N weeks before then.

If you can get into the course at all you have full discussion forum access, there was never any time gated access to Discussions or Wiki tools to my knowledge.

sarina commented 2 months ago

OK, so it sounds like this isn't a bug. It may be a good idea to note Marco's comment about the discussion access somewhere in the docs, or at least on the test sheet if this is part of a test.

mariajgrimaldi commented 1 month ago

Thank you all for the help, @sarina @marcotuts @crathbun428. The thing is that the documentation says the beta testers don't have access to discussions: https://docs.openedx.org/en/latest/educators/concepts/releasing-course/beta_testing.html#the-beta-testing-role https://github.com/openedx/frontend-app-discussions/issues/709#issuecomment-2307607788

However, beta testers are not the same as other learners in the course, either. They have privileged access to the course and have more time to review and complete the course materials than the enrolled learners do. Course discussions are not open before the course start date, so beta testers cannot participate in community conversations. As a result of these differences, beta testers do not receive certificates when they complete a course.

I'm not sure if this worked like this in the legacy FE, so I needed a bit more context. This makes me think this is more related to discussions being opened before the course starts than to the beta testers' behavior.

jmakowski1123 commented 1 month ago

I think it's reasonable to assume that if a user has been granted beta tester access by course staff for early access to the course content, then they would be equally trusted with early access to the forums. The use case is for beta testers to be test driving course content before it's available to all learners. If they also have access to see the discussion prompts (even if they can't participate/respond), even for things like proofreading, etc, I don't see this as a problem.