I can’t remember if I built a capability for this or not. At the least, it’d require a role capable of editing user profiles (I think only admins?) as the UI is on the edit user screen.
Why not let community admins determine which roles in their community can distribute awards? Each community would be different after all. In our case we’re using BuddyPress and I’d like to be able to specify that anyone with the editor role can give awards as well as create and edit achievements. In our community I have to be able to trust those that have this role anyway. Administrator role just gives away so much more for users to break – I don’t trust them that much.
I can see the existing Achievements > Users page with the Edit link leading to a users profile, as you described. I was thinking this page (Achievements > Users) could be more along the lines of the bulk edit interface for posts/pages – or perhaps even the quick edit inline UI for posts/pages. Having the interface here for editor role would mean not having to give access to the user profile. If all pages under the Achievements menu were self contained (i.e. not linking to the edit user profile screen) then we could happily allow access to those with the editor role. Is this making sense? What do you think? A feature for the next point release?
It makes some sense, but to do it properly, I’d use a current_user_can(‘edit_users’) check in the code, and that’s admins only: http://codex.wordpress.org/Roles_and_Capabilities#Capability_vs._Role_Table
I’ll think about this some more and see if anyone else asks for the same thing, but I think it’s going to be ultimately too niche to include in the plugin. (possible to code some custom stuff and skip the user cap check, of course, but ymmv).
I’ll add my voice to this chorus. I currently use Justin Tadlock’s Members plugin: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/members/ along with this http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/buddypress-restrict-group-creation/ and an addition function that added a capability teacher_groups so that I can do something very similar to this with Group Creation, allow teachers to create groups on the site (otherwise they are just subscribers).
I would love the ability for teachers to be able to award achievements. I would be willing to help support your time for this addition if you think it’s do-able.
I’m not sure if the plugins I’ve mentioned above could help to lead the way.
Like mrjarbenne, we’re a community within a school context. There are plenty of teachers who ought to be autonomous with their own BuddyPress group/class. So far we have only 1 site administrator, moi – planning for a backup but yet to find.
It’d be awesome for all of our teachers who are BP group admins and mods (I can happily promote to editor role but no higher), if they can distribute (at least) existing awards. I don’t see why we would allow teachers to edit anyone’s user profile.
I see the role of distributing awards as a much lower role than site admin. I fear if this task is left to site admins then my BP group admins (and moderators) are powerless to recognise their group member contributions. Additionally, the more teachers (editor role) who are empowered to run their own group autonomously and reward students for their effort, the greater the community will be.
Maybe it’s more of a BuddyPress only feature for Achievements but I think other large WordPress sites with multiple staff would also benefit from allowing those with editor role the capability to give awards (not edit profiles).
Some food for thought. Please consider.
Thanks for your time again,
Vernon
