# Can't delete the default topic of a category

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-delete-the-default-topic-of-a-category/274834>\
**Category:** Development\
**Tags:** rest-api\
**Created:** [August 11, 2023, 5:57pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-delete-the-default-topic-of-a-category/274834 "2023-08-11T17:57:39Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 3

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Canapin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/canapin/32/119591_2.png) [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)\
**Post date:** [August 11, 2023, 7:05pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/cant-delete-the-default-topic-of-a-category/274834/3 "2023-08-11T19:05:24Z")

</div>

Can you share why you want to remove these topics? Those are special topics that can’t and aren’t meant to be deleted.

If your goal is to delete all the topics and then delete the category, you can delete the category without deleting the About topic.

When people want to get rid of the About topics somehow, unlisting them as @Lilly suggest is the way to go.

> [@jucajuca](#):
>
> - How can I identify that topic using the API so that it is skipped.

I think these posts don’t have any unique attributes. They are identified as being special topics from the `category` table, via the `topic_id` column.

You can get them with the `/c/{id}/show.json` endpoint: [https://docs.discourse.org/#tag/Categories/operation/getCategory](https://docs.discourse.org/#tag/Categories/operation/getCategory).  
Look for the `topic_url` key.

For example:

[https://meta.discourse.org/c/7/show.json](https://meta.discourse.org/c/7/show.json)

```json
"topic_url": "/t/about-the-dev-category/1026"

```

* * *

A bit more technical info if that interest you.

The deletion protection 🛡 is here: [discourse/lib/guardian/topic\_guardian.rb at 7ecaf6295daf8759aa98d00e7035c4dc0f853303 · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/7ecaf6295daf8759aa98d00e7035c4dc0f853303/lib/guardian/topic_guardian.rb#L165)

And the method used is defined here: [discourse/app/models/topic.rb at 7ecaf6295daf8759aa98d00e7035c4dc0f853303 · discourse/discourse · GitHub](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/7ecaf6295daf8759aa98d00e7035c4dc0f853303/app/models/topic.rb#L1852)

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