Best way to separate public and private KB articles?

[asfsdf]

I am playing around with some ideas on how to manage knowledge base articles and would like to see your views on this.

The idea that I would like to try is to have some articles visible for customers and some articles visible only for internal staff.

The internal articles could be articles that are not mature enough to be viewed by a customer, due to the quality or content of the article. The internal articles could still be useful to have internally even if they lack detail and quality. If the article gets improved over time I would like to have the option to make that article public so that customers can see it as well.

Other internal articles might be of the sensitive nature which customers should never see so security must be a priority.

So that's the basic idea. I have thought of a couple of options on how to achieve this, but there might be more options to investigate.

My first idea is to use one KB and flag each article as public or internal. If the article is public, everyone will be able to see it.
If the article is not flagged as public only internal users will see the article. This would require some ACLs and possibly some scripts to make it clear for internal users if an article is public or internal. Only selected users would be able to flag an article as public.

My second idea is to simply use two different knowledge bases. One for internal use and one which is public for customers.
If an article in the internal KB need to be made public it, could be moved to the public KB.

This might cause some confusion for users who can see both the internal and public knowledge bases since articles are moved around. It would make it more clear what is public and what is internal and the management might be easier. It would also require less custom work. I guess the biggest drawback with this solution is that similar information might exist in both knowledge bases depending on the public field.

What are your thoughts about this?

Are there any best practices for how to manage private and public articles?

How have you done this your environment?

Any input on this would be helpful.

[Community Alums]

We did a similar thing with general knowledge available to everyone, and a separate knowledge base for IT. Create a role for the internal article access, then create the user criteria entry and apply it to the internal KB.

[asfsdf]

Thats certainly one of the options that I am thinking about. Thanks for the info.