So this is more of a raw idea than anything solid at this point that I hope sparks some discussion internally for you guys if you believe any part of it has value...

I'd like to see you move from having fixed beta and important flags to being more like a tag-based system where I can define any that I want. For example: Paid User, Free User, Corporate User, Beta. This would allow for a ton more flexibility especially if coupled with advanced tagging of categories and articles. For instance, I might be able to create a category that was only visible to users with the options of: (Paid User and Beta) or (Corporate User and Beta). Alternatively could be created as: (Paid User or Corporate User) and Beta

Setting these to a user at the time of multipass login (similar to the extras hash but directly related to their viewing/posing permissions) would be a huge win. Letting me control an individual discussion's visibility tags (maybe there is one created by a beta user that I want to make available to all) would also be a great improvement.

Another contrived example might be where I create a questions category that allows anyone access but when a user posts, only people with their same user type tags can view those posts. This would save me from having a questions group for each type of user.

Obviously, the biggest challenge with any of this is finding a balance between flexibility and ease of use.

Hope that some of these ideas might find their way into Tender. As it stands now, I have a group of user types that Ido not give access to Tender to avoid confusion for them and instead just present them with a contact form when following the support link on the site.