Deleting the About topics

[Faizan_Zahid]

When deleting a post, it will delete the topic itself too, if there was only 1 post, correct?

I have noticed that this does not allow the system topics/posts to be deleted. E.g if i want to delete the about topic for category eg https://howtodiscuss.com/t/about-the-insurance-category/15610

Or may-be it was auto created by system/admin, and there is no option to permanelt delete it. And there is not even any option to change ownership of system created topics for deleting them.

I think i will have to either delete them manually using

cd /var/discourse
./launcher enter app
rails c
Post.where(topic_id: 15610).destroy_all
Topic.find_by(id: 15610).destroy!

OR i would have to UN LIST the topic. If i unlist, it will only be visible to admins and not to anyone else, right?

Actually facing this Google spam penalty issue, that’s why need to clean my site and delete all duplicate or thin content from my site in bulk. Also wondering if there is any way to find all low word count thin content on my entire discourse site?

[Moin]

Deleting "About xxx Category

These topics cannot be deleted, no. If you don’t want them, leave the default text (so it isn’t used as a category description) and unlist the topic. Users won’t be able to see them.

[Faizan_Zahid]

@Moin I actually followed your advice and unlisted all of them.

But whenever i delete any topics using the above console code i shared, all these about this category topics again get created.

Now i have to unlist them again, is there any way to permanently delete these so they don’t get created again?

Google has given my site thin content penalty due to these issues.

https://howtodiscuss.com/search?q=(Replace%20this%20first%20paragraph%20with%20a%20brief%20description%20of%20your%20new%20category.%20

Google is detecting duplicate content on all of these. how do i fix this?

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Writing those descriptions for example?

[Stephen]

@Faizan_Zahid

Now i have to unlist them again, is there any way to permanently delete these so they don’t get created again

No, they’re necessary for a category to function, the existing text is placeholder and should always be tailored.

You need to write unique category descriptions for every publicly available category on your site.

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

I’m not sure I’m following you. If you unlist them, you don’t have your issue anymore, right? No need to delete them.

[Faizan_Zahid]

When i did unlist them, after some time, they start to show again and get listed automatically, don’t know why. I wanted them to permanently unlist. Is there anyway to permanently unlist these or permanently delete these?

[Canapin (Coin-coin le Canapin)]

Weird
Unlisting About topics was advised by @JammyDodger here:

Delete the inital description topic of a new category

Hello and welcome @raffoz The ‘About’ topics are special and cannot be deleted without breaking something important. You can close them to avoid users adding replies to them, or unlist them if you want to hide them from view (though they can be useful as category information/rules/guidance to new users).

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I did a test in my forum, I triggered pretty much all the Sidekiq tasks and my About topic kept being hidden from regular users.