UserGuide.md

Features

TA/Instructor endorsement

A TA or instructor should be able to endorse posts and replies.

User Testing

1. Sign into the admin account

2. Make a new group called either instructor or ta (case-insensitive)

3. Upvote one of the posts

4. You should see a badge like the one below: And if you've upvoted the first post in the topic, you should also see this on the category page:

   

Unit testing

Two new tests have been added to test/posts.js

The test voting as normal user should have post be returned as not endorsed upvotes a post as a regular user and checks that the post has not been endorsed.

The test voting as ta should have post be returned as endorsed has the user join a ta group first before upvoting the post. We then assert that the user has been added to the endorsedVotes list.

This covers the backend code changes

TA/Instructor badges

This feature forces all users in the instructor and TA groups to have a badge (either TA or INSTRUCTOR) next to their replies and posts. By default, NodeBB does offer badges, but it's opt-in per user and is by-default disabled when a user joins a group. This change makes it by-default enabled and does not allow users to hide the badge once they've joined a group. (this restriction does not apply to groups not called "ta" or "instructor")

User Testing

1. Create a ta or instructor group
2. Click Edit to edit group settings
3. Enable Show Badge. Feel free to customize the title, icon, and color of the badge.
4. Press Save Changes
5. You should now see the TA badge next to your username

Unit Testing

In test/user.js, I wrote the test 'should force instructor group onto groupTitleArray even if user deselects it' to test functionality. We set up the test by creating and joining the groups ta, instructor, and other-group. The subsequent User.updateProfile(testUid, { groupTitle: '[]', uid: testUid }) call is akin to the user going into their settings and setting the group badge display to be false for all groups. We then verify that when getting user data, the ta and instructor groups are still present in the groupTitleArray field. This test covers all of the changed lines of code.

All posts are either questions or notes

Like Piazza, students can now only post either questions or notes. (Clicking submit will create a question, while clicking Create New Note will, well, create a new note.)

to resolve a question, the original poster can open the dropdown menu on any post and click "Mark as answer". Only the original poster will see this option on the frontend.

Once a question has been resolved, a green rectangle will appear behind the answer post and the question tag will turn green. The change happens instantly, without needing a refresh, and is also persisted when the user refreshes the page.

Unit testing

test/post-answer.js tests the following:

• make a topic of type note
• make a topic of type question
• mark a reply as answer
• get the topic data again, where the data now should have the reply as a marked_answer.

Anonymous Posts — Hide Author Identity (#7)

When a post is created with anonymous: 1, the author's identity is hidden from non-admin users across the entire platform. Admins always see the real identity.

What is anonymized

• Topic view: Anonymous posts show "Anonymous" username with a "?" avatar. Profile links are disabled.
• Parent/quoted posts: When replying to an anonymous post, the parent preview shows "Anonymous" instead of the real author.
• Reply avatar previews: The small avatar previews shown below a post (indicating who replied) show "Anonymous" for anonymous replies.
• Category teasers: The recent post preview on the categories page shows "Anonymous" for anonymous posts.
• User profile pages: Anonymous posts are excluded from /user/:slug/posts and the profile's latest/best posts for non-admin, non-self viewers.
• Post count: The post count displayed on user profiles excludes anonymous posts for non-admin, non-self viewers.

User Testing

1. Sign in as an admin user.
2. Go to Admin → Settings → Post and ensure Allow anonymous posting is enabled.
3. Go to View Forum and select a category (such as General Discussion)
4. Create a New Topic
5. Verify there is a Post anonymously checkbox below the post content textarea (unchecked by default).
6. Enter content, check Post anonymously, and submit.
7. As admin, verify the post was created and can be moderated normally.
8. Go to Admin → Settings → Post and disable Allow anonymous posting.
9. Go to View Forum and select a category (such as General Discussion)
10. Create a New Topic
11. Verify there is no Post anonymously checkbox on the screen
12. Sign in as a regular (non-admin) user and view the same topic.
13. Verify that the anonymous post shows Anonymous with a ? avatar and no profile link.
14. Open the regular user-facing profile view for the original author and verify the anonymous post does not appear in post history and is excluded from displayed post counts.
15. Go to the categories page and verify category teaser/preview data shows Anonymous when the latest post is anonymous.

Unit Testing

Seven new tests were added to test/posts.js inside the existing describe('Anonymous posts', ...) block:

• Parent post anonymization (2 tests): Verifies that the parent post preview shows "Anonymous" for regular users and the real username for admins.
• Reply avatar preview anonymization (2 tests): Verifies that reply avatar previews show the anonymous placeholder for regular users and the real avatar for admins.
• Profile history filtering (3 tests): Verifies that anonymous posts are excluded from other users' profile post summaries, included in the author's own profile, and included for admin viewers.

Date/Pinned Grouped Topic View

When enabled, this feature causes all topics on a category page to be organized into collapsible date sections instead of a flat list. Topics are grouped into buckets such as "Today", "Yesterday", "This Week", "Last Week", and older weeks displayed as date ranges (e.g., "1/1-1/7", "1/8-1/14", ect.). Pinned topics always appear in their own "Pinned" section at the top. Each section header shows a chevron icon, the group label, and a topic count. Clicking a header collapses or expands that section with an animation. All sections are expanded by default. The setting defaults to enabled for all new users and is persisted server-side.

User Testing

1. Navigate to your user settings page at /user/<username>/settings
2. Scroll to the Browsing Settings section
3. Confirm the "group-topics-by-date" toggle is present and checked by default

4. Navigate to any category page with topics 5. You should see topics organized under date group headers like "Today", "Yesterday", "This Week", ect.: 6. Click a group header to collapse the section 7. Click again to expand (topics should slide back down) 8. Pin a topic and it should appear under a "Pinned" section at the top of the list 9. Go back to settings and uncheck "group-topics-by-date" and save your settings 10. Return to the category page and topics should now display as a standard flat list

Unit Testing

Tests are split across two files:

test/topics/dateGrouping.js contains unit tests for the groupTopicsByDateRange() utility function in src/topics/dateGrouping.js. These tests verify:

• Empty, null, and undefined inputs return an empty array
• Pinned topics are separated into a "Pinned" group that appears first
• Topics are correctly bucketed into "Today", "Yesterday", "This Week", "Last Week", and older week ranges like "1/1-1/7", "1/8-1/14", ect
• Older week ranges use the M/D-M/D format without leading zeros
• Topics within each group are sorted by timestamp descending (most recent first)
• Mixed pinned and regular topics are handled correctly

test/topics/groupedTopics.js contains tests covering:

• User setting persistence: categoryGroupedView defaults to true for new users, persists false after being disabled, survives a fresh getSettings() call, and can be updated via the PUT /api/v3/users/{uid}/settings API endpoint
• API response shape: categoriesAPI.getTopics() returns grouped: true with a dateGroups array when the setting is enabled, and grouped: false with a flat topics array when disabled. Each dateGroups item has the shape { label: string, topics: Topic[] }
• Category page rendering: the Read API response at /api/category/{slug} includes grouped and dateGroups fields, the "Pinned" group appears first when pinned topics exist, and each topic in dateGroups contains standard topic fields (tid, uid, cid, title, slug, timestamp, postcount)