Bug: Unpublishing a notebook closes attached suggestions

Steps:

  1. Fork a notebook and apply changes
  2. Submit as suggestion
  3. Publish notebook
  4. Unpublish notebook

Expected result:
Suggestion stays open.

Actual result:
Suggestion is now closed.

Notes:
I know why this happens (unpublishing is equivalent to unsharing), but would argue that it’s a problem from a usability perspective, especially since the suggestion cannot be reopened.

Minimal solution:
If a notebook with an open suggestion is unpublished, it reverts to “shared” (for the last shared version) instead of “private”.

Recommended solution:
Unpublishing a notebook should not be equivalent to unsharing:

  • Unsharing is the act of removing all access to a notebook, i.e. all past versions lose their “shared” state.
  • Unpublishing should only revert a notebook to unlisted.

If a notebook with already shared versions is unpublished, its state should fall back to “shared”. To completely disable access, the author should have to explicitely select “Disable link sharing”.

2 Likes

The history view on a notebook currently shows which versions were shared or published.

Unpublishing currently clears either “published” or “shared” status from every past version.

If a notebook with an open suggestion is unpublished, it reverts to “shared” (for the last shared version) instead of “private”.

This seems like a good idea.

I’d more generally like to see an ability to “share” a version of a published notebook without “publishing” it, and finer-grained control over which past versions have “published” or “shared” status.

If I e.g. accidentally put some sensitive information into a shared or published version of a notebook, it would good to be able to clear the status from just that version without affecting all other versions.

It would also be great to see in the history view a count of how many other notebooks import any particular pinned version, as well as how many other notebooks import this notebook without version pinning.

3 Likes