Changing ownership of posts

[Discourse]

This guide explains how to change the ownership of posts in Discourse. It covers methods for changing ownership of single posts, multiple posts within a topic, and all posts by a specific user.

Required user level: Administrator (or users with permission, see below)

By default only administrators have the ability to change post ownership. There are two site settings to extend this:

• moderators_change_post_ownership — set to true to allow all moderators to change post ownership.
• change_post_ownership_allowed_groups — add groups whose members should be able to change post ownership (e.g., for trusted non-staff users).

Discourse allows site administrators to change the ownership of posts. This feature can be useful in several scenarios:

• When a user leaves the community and you want to reassign their posts to an active user or a generic account
• To transfer valuable content to another user for maintenance
• To anonymize posts upon user request for privacy reasons

Changing ownership of a single post

To change the ownership of an individual post:

1. Click the ... icon at the bottom of the post, then click the wrench icon to open the post actions menu.

   

2. Select “Change Ownership” from the menu.

   

3. Enter the username of the new owner in the dialog box that appears.

   

4. Click “Change Ownership” to confirm the change.

Changing ownership of multiple posts in a topic

To change the ownership of multiple posts within a topic:

1. Navigate to the topic containing the posts you want to edit.

2. Click the wrench icon on the upper right side of the topic page.

3. Select “Select Posts…” and choose the posts you want to change ownership for.

   

   When selecting multiple posts in a topic, they must all be from the same user to allow ownership change.

4. Click “Change Ownership” from the available options.

   

5. Enter the username of the new owner in the dialog box that appears.

6. Click “Change Ownership” to confirm the change.

Changing ownership of all posts by a specific user

If you need to change the ownership of all posts from a specific user, refer to the guide on changing ownership of all posts by a specific user.

Last edited by @sam 2024-10-09T21:12:39Z

Last checked by @hugh 2024-07-30T23:51:08Z

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[CaptainJ]

Thanks for this guide. One question:

To anonymize posts upon user request for privacy reasons

How much anonymity/privacy does this afford? E.g. I have a forum hosted by Discourse, so if I change a user’s posts to a new owner, is there still a record of them as the original author somewhere (either publicly or on my end or on Discourse’s servers)?

[tvavrda (Tomas Vavrda)]

I think this is still a valid and interesting question.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

@CaptainJ

so if I change a user’s posts to a new owner, is there still a record of them as the original author somewhere (either publicly or on my end or on Discourse’s servers)?

Yes, there’s a record as a post revision. An admin or moderator can hide the post revision, and only them will see that the post was edited to change the author.