Open vs Closed

Every event and community carries one of two privacy modes. This page is about choosing one and changing your mind; what Closed actually protects is on Closed events.

Choosing at creation

The question to ask is the one community setup itself puts to you - essentially: does everyone here know and trust each other? A tight-knit group is simplest on Open - it's the default and how TicketSquad has always worked. If the circle is bigger than that, or you don't know everyone, Closed keeps personal details inside each buying group until you say otherwise.

You can change the setting later in event settings, with one asymmetry worth knowing up front: tightening is instant, loosening asks everyone first.

Tightening: Open → Closed, instantly

Flip an event to Closed and from that moment personal details are only visible inside each buying group. Two honest limits:

• It can't undo what anyone's already seen - it stops anything new being shown outside each group.
• On the way in, you'll be asked which custom fields should become private and which the whole event can keep seeing (a coach pickup point, say). You can adjust each field later.

Tightening also takes down any all-groups sale-day snapshot links that were floating around - Closed events never generate all-groups snapshots at all.

Loosening: Closed → Open, consent-first

Switching back to Open flips the mode straight away - but nobody's personal details reappear until they've individually confirmed they're happy to share them again. Each member gets a prompt (on the event page and their dashboard): Share my details or Not now. "Not now" is a real answer, not a snooze - a member can decline indefinitely, and their details simply stay group-only.

Coordinators see a count of how many members have confirmed, and can expand it to see who's still outstanding - but that's where it ends: there's deliberately no reminder or chase tooling attached. Sharing again is each member's decision to arrive at.

Communities floor their events

An event in a community can never be more open than the community:

• A Closed community means every event in it is Closed - the event's Open option shows as unavailable with an explanation, and creating an event straight into that community starts it Closed.
• Changing the community's mode cascades: tightening closes every event instantly; loosening runs the same per-member consent flow in every affected event. Detaching an event from a Closed community also triggers consent before anything loosens.
• Only the community owner can change its privacy setting; admins see it read-only.

Demo events

Always Open, and the privacy setting is read-only - demo data is there to be poked at.