Bulk deletion of topics

[SophieRice1 (Sophie)]

Hello,

Is there a way to bulk delete topics? We would like to cleanse our forum and remove inactive threads.

We are thinking we should remove topics with only one post (i.e no replies) started prior to this year. We have over 300 of these so it would take a while to do them one by one!

Also, is it standard practice to remove inactive threads, and does our criteria sound roughly right? Any advice would be very welcome.

Thanks,

Sophie

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

@SophieRice1

is it standard practice to remove inactive threads

No it isn’t. But with QA-type categories and old questions I would do same. Just because of cleaning searches.

Yet answering is better option

[JammyDodger]

Hello and welcome @SophieRice1

You can use the bulk options from the search results to delete en masse. You can add in the advanced filters to get what you need:

And then access the options from the wrench icon:

Personally I’d recommend selecting them individually just to be sure (though you can always undelete any you accidentally clip out), but if you want to ‘select all’ you will need to scroll down to load them all, or it will do them in ‘visible’ batches.

[SophieRice1 (Sophie)]

Ooh thank you! I’ll check this out

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Except all is not all but… 30 or something?

[JammyDodger]

On the topic list it will be 30 it loads initially, but on the search it will be 50. However…

@JammyDodger

but if you want to ‘select all’ you will need to scroll down to load them all, or it will do them in ‘visible’ batches.

[SophieRice1 (Sophie)]

@JammyDodger thanks, this is super helpful. I’m new to Discourse and didn’t even realise you can search in this way.

This might be asking too much, but, in the search box, is it possible to ask for something like ‘no replies before 31/12/2022 where the first word isn’t Community’? I imagine not but worth a try…

I have another follow-up question if that’s ok - is there any way, when I have my list of search results, to export these, to interrogate further?

Thanks,
Sophie

[JammyDodger]

@SophieRice1

This might be asking too much, but, in the search box, is it possible to ask for something like ‘no replies before 31/12/2022 where the first word isn’t Community’?

I’m afraid it currently doesn’t support a ‘does not include keyword’.

@SophieRice1

I have another follow-up question if that’s ok - is there any way, when I have my list of search results, to export these, to interrogate further?

If you have access to the data explorer that’s the best way to get that kind of information (and that would support filtering out keywords too, though no delete function as it’s a read-only query )

[SophieRice1 (Sophie)]

Thank you, I’ll check out Data Explorer