Hi there, I have a long-time user that is requesting temporary removal of all of their topics due to a specific personal reason. If their situation changes those topics could be restored in the future. While they are in the removed state the topics should not be publicly accessible even if somebody has the URL, and they are all currently indexed on the search engines. I read over these topics:
From what I understand,
Converting them to a PM would still allow other users that posted there to see them, so that option is out.
Archiving and Unlisting will still allow access to whomever knows the URL.
Moving them to a private / staff category would make it hard to restore them to the proper category.
So it looks like “deleting” them would be the best option? As long as I don’t have the permanent delete feature enabled these would remain in the database indefinitely with the possibility to restore them bulk, correct?
Does the bulk actions button work on all the user’s topics at once, or only the topics that are loaded into the page?
Is there a way to differentiate between deleted replies and deleted topics? The /u/name/deleted-posts page shows everything together. This appears to show only topics: /filter?q=status:deleted%20topics%2Ccreated-by%3A%40Username
Although I can’t understand why the syntax is status:deleted<space>topics . And is there a similar solution for only deleted replies?
/?status=deleted seems to show unlisted topics together with deleted topics. I’m not sure why this is, as there is a separate /?status=unlisted filter.
There could potentially be problems in the future with restoring the user’s “deleted” posts, as there would be no way of knowing which topics were deleted for this particular reason and which were deleted for some other reason to remain deleted.
Ideally I wish there was a settings option to make archived topics inaccessible to the public.
Thanks in advance for your help, I just want to be 100% sure of what I’m doing to avoid creating an administrative mess for myself farther down the road.
Just their topics is what they are requesting. But if there is a good way to temporarily remove access to all their posts I would be interested in knowing that too.
I suppose it might work to remove the person’s username and content from the first post in the topic and leave the rest of the thread accessible via the URL. But it wouldn’t be enough to simply hide the content of the first post with CSS, it needs to be not publicly accessible at all.
It sounds like what the OP is wanting is something similar to vBulletin’s Global Ignore feature.
If you aren’t familiar, it basically keeps all of a user’s posts and topics in place, but makes them unavailable to non-staff accounts until they are removed from the list. It’s one of the few vB features I miss not having in Discourse.
Right. I understand that it’s an uncommon request. I wouldn’t expect Discourse to necessarily implement an entire process for that. But I do think it would be good to implement a setting option to make archived topics inaccesible to non-staff. Then I could deal with manually archiving and un-archiving the topics, while keeping them separate from other topics that might have been deleted and should stay deleted.
Global Ignore
This option allows you to effectively add a user or users to every member’s ‘Ignore List’. However, users in this list can still see their own posts and threads…
Enter a list of userid numbers, separated by spaces (for example: 4 12 68 102).
That is indeed interesting. Although I don’t think it would be enough in this particular case if it had “see this hidden post” links or if the post content was CSS hidden in the HTML. For what I need the former URL should throw a 404 for non-staff.
회원들은 Contribute > Feature 주제를 만들어 보려는지를 스스로 결정할 수 있습니다. 전역 무시(Global Ignore)는 vB에서 흥미로운 기능이지만, 제 개인적으로는 유용한 도구라고 느끼지 않습니다. 저는 대부분 서로 잘 아는 작은 사이트를 운영하고 있기 때문입니다.
이로 인해 @rahim123 님에게 이런 생각이 들었습니다. 그분들이 왜 그렇게 대응하고 있는지 이해한다고 단정하지는 않겠지만, 제 작은 사이트라면 이렇게 하지 않을 것입니다. 누군가가 급하게 떠나고 싶다면, 해당 사용자의 기여물을 익명 처리해 줄 수 있다고 말하겠지만, 그것은 우리 작은 사이트의 합의에 반하는 일입니다.
클라이언트를 위해 설정한 사이트에서는 이런 상황을 다루는 조항이 항상 약관에 포함되어 있습니다. 또한 사용자가 자신의 콘텐츠를 '비활성화’해 달라고 요청한 뒤, 나중에 다시 '활성화’해 달라고 기대하는 것은 적절하지 않다고 생각합니다.
그림자 금지(shadowbanning) 도구에 대해서는 의견 내지 않겠습니다. 웹에서는 복잡한 문제이기 때문입니다. 하지만 '(개인적인 이유로) 사용자가 요청할 수 있는 그림자 금지’를 스위치처럼 제공하는 것은 설득하기 어려운 일인 것 같습니다.
대신 타협점을 찾아볼 것입니다. '삭제하고 싶은 주제를 표시해 주면, 이후 사용자의 계정을 비활성화하겠습니다’라고 말하겠습니다.
In this case I’m going to honor the user’s request given the details of the particular situation.
I proceeded with the deletion. The deleted topics will remain indefinitely in the database, correct? No automatic hard deletion?
If/when needed I can access the list of deleted topics with: /filter?q=status%3Adeleted%20topics%2Ccreated-by%3A%40Username
But unfortunately it looks like there’s no bulk un-delete operation. Does it sound like a reasonable request to at least implement that in Discourse? Or is there any other way to accomplish that via the GUI?
It’s more or less a shadow ban feature.
