Having recently upgraded a forum to 3.4.6 I was surprised to learn this had not been addressed either by feature update or mod.

While the postable forums have been a welcome setting, if "Allow posters to view other member's topics" is set to "no", users also can't view pinned topics. Isn't a pinned topic inferred that it's meant to be viewed by all? It would be nice if this oversight were fixed in 4.0, or hookable so a mod could be more easily created. Currently, the only workaround is to make announcements, which don't have the same formatting, and don't allow replies.

Yes, there's a hook: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

It will allow the user to view all topics created by the board staff (admins, moderators and forum moderators).