In a support thread titled “Why do some first posts get locked?”, szhorvat reports that new posts on their Discourse forum are occasionally locked without explanation or moderation history. They rule out category auto-lock settings and staff-triggered locks. IAmGav and JammyDodger suggest that users can lock topics by deleting their own first post (OP) if no replies exist — though this typically leaves a visible “topic deleted by author” notice and edit history. However, szhorvat observes that in their case, the lock appears silently — no deletion notice or edit trail — and shares a link to an example topic. IAmGav replicates the issue by deleting their own test post, confirming it locks the topic without altering the text — and unlocking it by undeleting. szhorvat confirms this matches the behavior they saw, noting the version is Discourse 2.8.0.beta6. IAmGav calls it a bug , and szhorvat concludes that while confusing, users can self-unlock by undeleting — and assumes Discourse will fix it eventually. IAmGav adds a screenshot and jokingly suggests deleting the test post to document the bug.
It has happened more than once now on our forum that the first time I see a new post, it is already locked. I am unable to figure out how it might have gotten locked. I am posting here in the hope of getting some tips about what might be happening.
Can normal users (not moderators) lock their own posts?
The moderation history is empty. If another moderator had locked it (by accident), if would show in the history, right?
Does the system auto-lock first posts which appear to be of low quality? The locked ones were like this.
A user can dustbin the OP if there are no replies. This locks the topic. It should replace the OP text with ‘topic deleted by author’, or something similar. I think that leaves an edit history though.
(Most) other posts in the same category did not get locked, so I don’t think that’s it. I checked the category settings and found “Auto-close topic after: … mins”. It is not enabled.
I found this as well, and it is not enabled.
I have seen this before, and indeed it looks different. As in your screenshot, it shows (topic deleted by author). In this case, the topic simply had a padlock icon next to it, but otherwise everything looked usual, and there was no sign of an edit history.
At the moment it’s not a big deal, as it’s only the second time I notice it, and it was easy to unlock the topic. But I’d like to avoid unnecessary frustration for our forum users, so it’d be good to understand what is happening.
Did you delete, then undelete again? It does not seem to show the usual (topic deleted by author).
Either way, this explains what happened. Thanks so much!
It seems to be Discourse 2.8.0.beta6. This is an installation managed by Discourse-the-company on the discourse.group domain, so I never had to deal with updating, or even checking the version.
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