When I wanted to check back in, and see if there where any replies to my follow up on the above linked post in the thread, I found that my post was deleted. Also, I can see there is one reply to the linked post in the topic, but when I push the reply-switch in the post nothing happens.
If it is a bug, it is a bug.
If it is somehow related to my post having such a value that it is deleted, maybe Discourse should have some kind of feature to let me know or some kind of better handling of this situation. Right now I am just feeling baffled/confused as to what happened and unwelcome in this particular neighbourhood on the internet.
In line with how I understand Discourse wants to stimulate good community-building, maybe a notice should be sent to me in the form of a private message, with two lines as to why my contributions have no value to the community.
Maybe it is just me, but I do not feel particularly welcome here anyways. I am too much of a noob maybe. Maybe my posts are not articulated well-enough. English not being my native tongue and all. But I think my posts are reasonably well put.
Do we need some kind of better handling of this situation with unwelcome posts by members ?
Were you reporting an issue that was subsequently resolved by the changes?
Topics are routinely cleaned up so that users don’t have to scroll through hundreds of historical responses to get a grasp of the current situation. Forcing moderators to provide a reason for every removed post would be incredibly burdensome. official plugin topics (the topic you’ve linked is one of these) are very well-maintained, most have less than 100-replies apiece. Compare that to unofficial plugins, where many have hundreds of replies.
There’s also the possibility it was just an oversight. The team who do most of the moderation isn’t in a habit of deleting genuinely useful or actionable content, which is why I’m inclined to wonder if whatever you were asking for has since been addressed.
No, I am not sure. And yes I was reporting about an issue that was subsequently resolved by the changes. I was posting regarding his awesome fix for the Algolia-plugin. About how it didnt work after I had updated to the latest Discourse, as he explicitly stated was necessary. Then after Discourse was updated again, I updated Discourse again, and then it worked. And I edited my post a couple of times to reflect this development and some other stuff I cant remember and check back now that it is deleted
All the same. It just doesnt feel right. A checkbox for those who moderate to let me know why it was deleted seems to be a proper handling of the situation. Simple deletion is not in line with my understanding of Discourse. If you wanna moderate, moderate it properly
Those specific posts were rendered irrelevant (hey it’s not working, followed by, oops, once I updated to latest version it started working), so they were removed. They provide no value to any future readers of the topic.
I totally get that. In my opinion it does however indicate whether the plugin is maintained properly or if it s a bit rough around the edges, since it did not work as the post said it id. Only after I did another update of Discourse did it work. To me it does have value knowing whether a fix is a fix is a fix - or, if it is somehow not given the “official” stamp.
But moving right along to my topic - what is the best way of handling this situation ? A pm as I and Simon suggest in his link:
That probably hinges more on your understanding of how fixes are rolled out.
If a developer links a PR that will fix an issue, which is quite common here, that PR isn’t immediately available for use. A PR is a pull request, emphasis on request there. Another team member has to approve and merge the change. If you aren’t aware of the difference it’s possible to update before the PR has been tested and merged, giving the impression that the change didn’t fix the original problem.
Yes, you are right. I did not understand that. One of my posts in the topic that was deleted actually inquired into what pr-welcome means. The reply did not clarify that in a - to me - usable way. But your reply did explain it to me. I now understand.
@Stephen - Maybe this is the initial problem ? The way you/we organize these plugin-docs ? Maybe separate documentation on plugin and install-instructions from feature suggestions, bugfixing and other things ? It just isnt the optimal solution to have all these things in one topic.
The topic was not well-maintained. It was orphaned. No one had taken the time to respond in months, as to why it wasnt working and what the status was on this.
All official plugin topics have been groomed to either have their replies integrated into the OP with helpful information or split off into separate topics in feature, bug, or support.
Autodeletion of replies has been turned on for official plugin topics. Replies are deleted after 30 days. This is to help keep our documentation-style topics clean and easy to follow.
We’re watching these topics for any discussion that might be helpful past 30 days and splitting these topics out. @osioke and myself have been monitoring these. More ephemeral discussion is left in the plugin topic.
Splitting off issues into separate topics helps us track them better and get engineers assigned in more granular fashion. This also gives the community a better chance to offer support and bump specific feature requests, too.
While this doesn’t add in a feature to notify a user why a post is deleted, it does address it in another way by setting expectations. It can now be expected that resolved discussions or ephemeral troubleshooting in official plugin topics will be deleted going forward – not because they are a nuisance, but because our development team moves so quickly that a discussion about a bug that’s fixed is likely not relevant after a month or so.
If something isn’t fixed in short order, it’s moved to a permanent topic which can later be closed once resolved.
I hope this clears up at least some of the confusion around why posts are deleted!
Just FYI, these are fine policies, but if not well communicated in each plugin topic (or perhaps in the broader Plugins tag), then it does not address the new user experience (potential confusion, even a feeling of being unwelcome or contributions unwanted) in the case of e.g. a topic reporting a bug that is quickly fixed, as happened in the original poster’s case.
In other words any reply to an official plugin topic that does not justify being split out risks this kind of confusion for anyone who doesn’t already know how plugin topics are handled. I was one of those people and I frankly still don’t know where that info about official plugin topic handling is made generally available. I had to ask, and have it explained to me, which is suboptimal both for me and the staff who have to spend time repeatedly explaining this.
What about templated or automated responses for “standard” deletes, as with responses to flagged posts?
I’m working on this problem this year, so expect some changes.