# Moving posts break internal links
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-posts-break-internal-links/275423
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [August 16, 2023, 5:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-posts-break-internal-links/275423 "2023-08-16T17:00:34Z")
**Posts on this page:** 3
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2023, 5:00pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-posts-break-internal-links/275423/1 "2023-08-16T17:00:34Z")
If I link to a post that subsequently gets thread-split to a new location, that link becomes semi-broken. It’d be great if these links could get updated retroactively — discourse knows about the link and the targeted post even carries with it the appropriate backlink.
Example:
> [@Restrict moderator access to only the stats panel on the admin dashboard?](https://meta.discourse.org/t/can-a-moderator-have-access-to-the-stats-panel-on-the-admin-dashboard/146468/15):
>
> I do think the [Data Explorer](https://meta.discourse.org/t/32566) plugin can do exactly what you want here, but it unfortunately requires some SQL know-how to set up the queries. Once you have the queries you want you can make them available to any group of users as you prefer. [https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-cool-data-explorer-queries-have-you-come-up-with/43516/279](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-cool-data-explorer-queries-have-you-come-up-with/43516/279)
which links to
> [@Replicated dashboard stats](https://meta.discourse.org/t/replicated-dashboard-stats/275169):
>
> These aren’t very “cool” — they’re just replications of some of stats from the admin report dashboard — but I’ve found them helpful to provide access to non-admin users: SELECT a.date, a.users, b.posts, c.topics, d.likes, e.pageviews FROM ( -- /admin/reports/signups SELECT DATE(u.created\_at), count(\*) as users from users as u group by DATE(u.created\_at) ) as a LEFT JOIN ( -- /admin/reports/posts SELECT DATE(p.created\_at), count(\*) as posts from posts as p join …
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2023, 5:13pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-posts-break-internal-links/275423/2 "2023-08-16T17:13:32Z")
Ah, sorry about that. It would normally have a small action post as a bridge, but that was a bit of a messy state to leave that particular topic in. I had been manually tidying up the backlinks/references as I went but I must have missed a couple.
I think it would be good if everything worked automagically, as a direct link to the proper post is a lot better than going to a bridging small action post (if one still existed) and then following that to the current topic, but I don’t know how easy that would be to do?
I’m not sure this can be classed as a bug though, as I think it’s working as expected. I’ll slide this over to #Contribute > Feature. 👍
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### Author:  [@mbauman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mbauman)
#### Post date: [August 16, 2023, 5:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/moving-posts-break-internal-links/275423/3 "2023-08-16T17:29:46Z")
Yeah, I totally appreciate the new #data-reporting category and the cleanup work you did there! I just think that the software shouldn’t break its own links by default (or require even more meta-cleanup from moderators).
Amusingly, I’m simultaneously having an internal discussion about the blurry and biased line between a #Contribute > Bug and a #Contribute > Feature and how users see the line differently from developers… and I must admit I submitted this as a “bug” with a grin, knowing it’s a perfect example of a missing feature that pretty much looks like a bug… so sorry for making you do that extra re-categorization I knew would end up happening, hah!