The discussion revolves around making a topic read-only on a Discourse instance. carninglipartners wants to create a series of related, read-only posts over several months, with discussions taking place in a separate topic. cpradio suggests closing the topic and customizing the close message to point to the discussion topic, as the “Reply as Linked Topic” feature will still work. pfaffman shares a similar approach used for challenges, where students reply-as-linked-topic in a different category. However, codinghorror notes that closing a topic is not truly read-only, as it still allows other actions like likes and edits, and suggests archiving the topic as a closer alternative to true read-only.
Last year I installed a Discourse instance set up on a Digital Ocean droplet. It has worked fine, but now I want to make a series of related posts on a certain topic over a period of several months and make them read only.
I would like discussion of these posts to take place in a separate topic so that the original ‘diary-like’ posts are kept apart.
Is this possible or indeed desirable?
Thanks
Dan
Close them? The Reply as Linked Topic will still work, or you can customize the close message to point them to the Discussion topic.
I do this for challenges (aka assignments) that are presented in categories that are read-only (everyone can “see”, admin can create/reply/see). Students are instructed to reply-as-linked-topic and post their responses in a different category. It works pretty well, though the reply-as-linked-topic button is hidden if your mouse isn’t on the message, which some people find confusing.
This solution has each student create a new topic for their solution. If what you want is a single conversation about the read-only message, then what you might want to do is reply-as-linked-topic yourself and put that new topic into a category that is see/reply for everyone.
Archiving a topic would be closer to true read only. Closing a topic only prevents replies, it still allows other actions (likes, edits within the allowed edit window, etc).