Allow TL4 to merge posts. Oh, and having merge posts be reversible

Part 1 - Allow TL4 to merge posts.

I’m a TL4 here on meta.discourse.org and I’d love the ability to merge posts. It is quite common to have a user post multiple times in quick succession, when an edit of their first topic would do the job oh so much cleaner. A nice little merge makes a whole lot of tidy, keeping neat freaks like me happy.

Merging posts via the spanner menus is only currently possible for admin, mod, & category mod. Merging posts can’t be done manually by TL4s either due to the inability to delete a post.

It isn’t really feasible to promote those like me to mod, nor is it desirable to have my ilk as a series of category mods (think of the mess on the /about page!).

Merging isn’t (very) destructive, and all the text is retained (also in the edit history). It would seem a nice thing to grant to TL4s.

Part 2 - Reversible Merge

Now as a mod / admin on other forums, I’ve sometimes merged a few posts and then regretted it.

Unfortunately, while possible to unpick (at least partially), it is not pretty. One must move off the posts below, add in a new post, drop in the text, change the owner, and then fiddle with the dates. And still the likes / replies are a bit messed up.

It would be brilliant to be able to ‘Unmerge’. It would also be good for those TL4s above!

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TL4 can split, so merging makes sense.

How woudl this be added? I cant really think of a place it could have a button and not be intrusive, maybe the wrench?

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Have you given any thought to the other user involved, and how they’re likely to feel about it?

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Well TL4 can already lock, unlist, archive, edit, make wiki, and some more that can all be seen that they did it by normal users.


Yea I would agree the post-wrench with a button that says unmerge and I would say there should be a popup saying that you want to unmerge to prevent unintended notifications going to the user.

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In that case it could be not undoable within 30 mins or so?

The problem with TL4 not being able to delete posts will be solved with this PR.

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