I am trying to remove some categories in favor of using tags, but I end up with one system created topic that I cannot delete (it is Technical in the screenshot, notice the -1 replies). If I try to visit this topic the page freezes and I have to close the tab and start over. Any idea how to delete t…

I was able to reset the topic count using Category.find_by(name: 'Gear').update(topic_count: 0) And then was able to delete the category, thanks David!

Thanks Daniela, that worked to delete the topic, but now when I try to delete the category it still thinks there is one topic and won’t allow me to delete the category. Similar function to delete the category?

Take a full backup of your site, then try with cd /var/discourse ./launcher enter app rails c rake destroy:topics["Gear","Discussions"] where Gear is your subcategory and Discussions is your parent category. This should be enough to destroy all the topics in that subcategory. After that you shoul…

Unfortunately this is the result… NameError: undefined local variable or method `topics' for main:Object from (pry):1:in `__pry__' [2] pry(main)>

My mistake, try only cd /var/discourse ./launcher enter app rake destroy:topics["Gear","Discussions"]

There are 0 topics to delete in discussions/gear category yet I still can’t delete the category Can't delete this category because topic count is 1.

Can you see your logs to see if there are specific errors?

No I don’t see anything in the logs related to this…

Can you try updating the category counters, and see if that helps. cd /var/discourse ./launcher enter app rails c Category.ensure_consistency! And then try deleting the category again

That returned nil unfortunately

Cannot delete system created topic

Product Support

dax (Daniela) August 14, 2019, 2:41pm 2

Try with

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
Topic.find(id).destroy

You will find the id placing the mouse over the topic title

Topic		Replies	Views
I can't delete a category or topic description Product Support	27	2381	September 11, 2018
Can't delete this category because it has 1 topic Product Support	11	1376	February 2, 2021
Can't delete topic without category Product Support	13	357	May 28, 2025
Bulk delete all topics in a category Self-Hosting how-to	0	6075	September 23, 2018
Error Message when editing large number of topics Product Support	17	1839	November 1, 2019

Cannot delete system created topic

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