Editing a deleted topic is broken

Contribute Bug

AI-generated summary

A bug has been reported where editing a deleted topic in a Discourse forum is broken. When attempting to edit a deleted topic, a blank modal appears, and any changes made are not saved to the server, although they do appear on the page initially savef.

The issue is further discussed by the team, with codinghorror mentioning that allowing deleted post edits has been deemed too difficult to implement due to the unusual states of deleted posts. Mittineague questions the use case for editing deleted posts, suggesting that undeleting the post before editing would be a reasonable expectation.

However, sam notes that editing a deleted topic still appears to be broken, with an error message popping up, and proposes to close the issue as “won’t-fix” due to the strangeness of editing a deleted topic.

1

Two things that are broken:

  • Editing a deleted topic gives you a modal which is blank.
  • The post on the page is updated with the edit changes, but these changes are not on the server.

Steps to replicate:

  • Create a new topic.
  • Delete that topic.
  • Edit the post.
  • Notice a blank modal appears when you hit save.
  • Undelete the post.
  • Notice the changes you made in your edit appear to be live.
  • Hit F5 to see that the edits you made were not saved.

Fixes:

  • The modal after editing your deleted post should say “your edits cannot be saved”.
  • The post’s content on your screen should not be updated.

Alternatively the forum could just allow changes to deleted topics and not show a modal.

I can replicate this on my own forum, I attempted to do it on sandbox too but I can’t delete my topics there so I wasn’t able.

Editing a deleted post doesn’t give a modal, and does seem to update the real post.

2

@techAPJ can you have a look?

3

We looked at this before and you, @sam, said it was incredibly hard to fix (allowing deleted post edits) as deleted posts have too many unusual states around them.

Still, maybe the flow could be improved, but editing deleted posts does not seem to be in the cards, though I think it would be useful in a few contexts…

「いいね！」 1
4

I can not imagine a use case for ever wanting to edit a deleted post.

And if I ever did want to for some reason, wouldn’t it be reasonable to expect that I would undelete it before editing it?

「いいね！」 4
5

Deleted posts seem editable to me these days :slight_smile:

However editing a deleted topic seems still a bit broken, an error shows up.

My call here is to close as wont-fix.

I get wanting to edit a deleted post, but editing a deleted topic seems very strange. And an error pops up anyway

「いいね！」 4