On a hosted Discourse instance, system-created topics cannot be directly deleted. bcardarella faced this issue and was unable to delete topics despite being logged in as Admin. ondrej suggested a workaround by setting a topic timer via the topic admin wrench, but this method is untested. Alternatively, pfaffman advised that certain topics, such as ‘About the Lounge category’, are required and cannot be deleted, but can be unlisted to hide them from lists. The ‘Lounge category’ can be deleted, but deleting system categories like ‘staff’ is not recommended.
There are a few system owned topics/categories. I want to delete these categories but first need to delete the topics. I follow the steps I’ve seen elsewhere, I select the topics then choose “Delete” under the wrench but they topics don’t go away. I am logged in as Admin.
Another discussion thread on this suggested going into the Rails console but I’m on a trial hosted instance and suspect I don’t have that type of access.
Hi,
You can’t delete these topics eg. ‘About the Lounge category’ as they are from pre seeded categories. Apparently you can delete these by setting a topic timer via the topic admin wrench? However, I’m not sure if anything funky would happen (I’ve never tried).
That’s correct.
You can’t delete the about topics. They are required. You can unlist them so that they don’t show up in lists.
You can delete the lounge category, but deleting staff is a bad idea, but, you know, only staff can see it.
Are those the things you want to delete?