# How do I delete topics and categories?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [June 14, 2018, 6:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846 "2018-06-14T06:09:18Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:09am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/1 "2018-06-14T06:09:18Z")
Perhaps I am an idiot, but this is not easy at all to understand. I have searched for previous threads, most of which are ~3 years old, and there don’t seem to be obvious answers.
I just opened a new Discourse instance. I want to delete all of the existing categories (Staff, Lounge, etc). I see a message:
> Can’t delete this category because is has 1 topic.
I don’t see any way to bulk delete topics.
Some of the topics show a “Delete topic” button on the wrench icon, but others do not.
How do I delete these topics & categories? Is there a “Discourse for Dummies” guide out there or something that I simply missed?
Thank you!
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:19am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/2 "2018-06-14T06:19:03Z")
Hey there,
Each of those categories is slightly different. You can definitely delete the Lounge category by deleting the posts within it but you can’t delete the Staff category because it contains posts which are important, like your TOS.
It might make sense to back up and tell us why you want to delete the categories and what you’re trying to achieve.
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### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/3 "2018-06-14T06:24:11Z")
This Discourse board will be 100% internal to my organization, so we don’t need any of this information like TOS or Privacy Policy.
The “sensible defaults” of Discourse seem to be for a public-facing forum, and since this particular forum will only ever be private, many of the defaults don’t seem to apply.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:26am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/4 "2018-06-14T06:26:32Z")
I’m sorry, are you referring to Discord? If so you are in the wrong place.
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### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:27am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/5 "2018-06-14T06:27:04Z")
Discourse\*
We use both, muscle memory 😉
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### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/6 "2018-06-14T06:32:27Z")
By the way, the same goes for badges (and probably a bunch of other things I haven’t run into yet). There’s no way to disable all built-in badges or delete them (I searched for this as well), so again “sensible defaults” which make sense for a public form don’t work.
So is there a “beginner’s guide” to configuring Discourse? I suppose there is not, or I would have come across it by now. ☹
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/7 "2018-06-14T06:34:47Z")
> [@anon20593648](#):
>
> There’s no way to disable all built-in badges
Yup, there is.
> [@anon20593648](#):
>
> So is there a “beginner’s guide” to configuring Discourse?
No, there’s not as such but TBH it shouldn’t be required – the setup wizard takes you through all the impt steps. Your use case is very edge, as you’ve discovered. Feel free to ask your questions here and we’ll answer them. 🙂
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### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:37am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/8 "2018-06-14T06:37:12Z")
> [@HAWK](#):
>
> Yup, there is.
I want to not use the built-in badges, not disable the badge system entirely. I have “disabled” them all, but now I have a long long list of disabled badges, with my custom badges beneath. It makes for a very inconvenient UX: scrolling all the way to the bottom, clicking on a badge, then scrolling all the way back up to see what it does.
Maybe an improvement suggestion: disabled badges show below enabled ones?
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:38am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/9 "2018-06-14T06:38:47Z")
> [@anon20593648](#):
>
> Maybe an improvement suggestion: disabled badges show below enabled ones?
Yup, that makes sense.
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### Author:  [@anon20593648](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon20593648)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 6:43am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/10 "2018-06-14T06:43:08Z")
Can you provide recommendation for how to deal with “trust level” for a private org? We have our own permission system (department, job title, etc) - should I just set every member to TL\_(?) and then ignore it? Are there a bunch of related settings I should disable?
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [June 14, 2018, 12:08pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/11 "2018-06-14T12:08:35Z")
You can set the default trust level to 2.
The staff category is visible to staff only, so it’s not a problem that it exists.
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [December 22, 2020, 10:59pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-topics-and-categories/89846/12 "2020-12-22T22:59:16Z")