Currently one way we deal with mega-topics is to delete all old replies on a periodical basis.
This seems draconian to me.
Is it possible to set a “number of replies” window and have Discourse delete the first reply once that number of replies has been reached, thereby creating a “rolling window” without resetting the entire topic?
So, once the number is hit, it should delete the first Reply in the Topic for any subsequent Reply.
A couple of examples of where this would be useful:
Plugin Topics where they tend to get very long, but where recent support history is really important (so you don’t want to delete it unless absolutely necessary)
when your Posts are a message feed from another system when it’s natural to want recent history, but not necessary to keep everything.
This is imho superior to a time based arbitrary wipe.
I would go further and suggest it should be an option in the “Topic Timer” controls (and that control might have to be renamed as a result to reflect the fact it is no longer necessarily “time” based)
Had thought the existing system would do that when it states replies are automatically deleted after 30 days, but that deletes all comments at once even if they are only 1 day old if first comment on topic is 30 days old?
The “rolling window” idea would make sense if possible to delete comments after they had been published for a whole 30 days, not delete everything in entire conversation that had started 30 days ago if that is possible.
Have seen it mentioned idea with that can be for good ideas in comments to be incorporated into original wiki post instead of left as comments.
For example if you set it to 100 replies. Once the topic has 101 posts. Post number 102 would become 101 as post number 2 is deleted to maintain max of 100 replies.
I don’t know what “CH” means in that, but for the feature request of using number of posts instead of number of days, would that be more difficult to write a program based on post number instead of day number?
Could make sense for some topics, but there is a risk to start loosing important posts if conversation starts to go quickly there could be 100 replies in a day that everyone who doesn’t check the topic that day would miss.
The idea here is to keep things rolling with less loss. Programming wise? Imho not too difficult as it simply deletes the oldest replies in the batch. Vs the current time based method that wipes out all replies.
With the current method we can say as maybe partially unexpected behaviour. You see a topic has new replies but the content of those replies is empty due to the system wiping the topic clean. With Robert’s proposal there will always be a bit of history that can be reviewed.
There is still info loss. But not complete loss like current method. Robert & I did have a private brainstorm on some supplementary ideas that could reduce info loss. But that is for another topic maybe vs contesting this one with bloat.
Sanity check, we run a meme/sh*tpost thread where replies older than 90 days are deleted…it doesn’t delete anything younger than 90 days.
You seem to be describing 'when 90 days hits it deletes all replies, which it doesn’t, or shouldn’t. We never run into that limit because it’s very active…but if it went dormant for 3 months, the thread would be empty - if that’s what you mean.
See Op Post. This is how it is working on Meta is to delete all replies after a set amount of time.
Your forum seems to be using something different than what has been in use on some category topics here.
Your forum’s meme topic seems to be doing in part what Robert is proposing as a change. Save his proposal removes time as a factor with setting a max number of replies. Where new replies once the threshold is met bumps/deletes the oldest replies
Interestingly I couldn’t find/identify the setting in Category Settings. Is this a plugin that performs topic resets? Or is it something that needs to be enabled in main site settings before it shows in Category settings?
