A spam user recently revived some old topics from years ago, pushing the topics to the top of the list (when ordering topics by “Latest”). Upon deleting the user, and their posts, the topics still appear at the top of the list. This seems confusing for other users who may ask “why were these old top…

This bug might be happening right now here on http://meta.discourse.org : This topic is the latest as of right now, but the latest post there is from December 2014. The tooltip of the Activity cell claims there was a post today, but clicking it reveals the newest post is still from December 2014. W…

Hi @codinghorror , would I be correct in guessing that they are “virtually” deleted? Logically, if they were deleted they would be no longer there, and therefore they would no longer be the latest post. I’m unfamiliar with the database and curious about the implementation, specifically whether it’s…

[image] Bones: I’m unfamiliar with the database and curious about the implementation, specifically whether it’s possible to undelete a post :smile: Yes, everything is soft deleted, so undelete is an option.

I understand the technical reason why these topics remain at the top. From a non-technical standpoint (particularly, from the point of view of a user who cannot see the deleted posts), I don’t understand why the topics would still be at the top.

[image] cpradio: Yes, everything is soft deleted Except for the User class though. [image] chrisalley: I understand the technical reason why these topics remain at the top. From a non-technical standpoint (particularly, from the point of view of a user who cannot see the deleted posts), …

I still maintain that, [image] dandv: In any case, at least the tooltip is incorrect.

[image] dandv: In any case, at least the tooltip is incorrect. But it isn’t. It only seems that way because the last post was deleted and you can’t see it.

[image] Mittineague: But it isn’t. It only seems that way because the last post was deleted and you can’t see it. That is semantics. As a developer, I understand why you are technically correct. As a user, it doesn’t make any sense to see “Last post: yesterday”, click that to see the last po…

Has this been resolved somehow, perhaps with some feature to manually refresh last-updated timestamps to ignore deleted posts? Sorry to necro this old thread, but Search couldn’t find a more recent or relevant one. Today we had to block+suspend a user and delete their >50 spam posts (and reset our …

Old topic containing newly deleted post still appears at the top

Support

codinghorror (Jeff Atwood) September 29, 2015, 9:05am 3

Not a bug, just a fact of life – deleted posts you can’t see may indeed be the last post in a topic.

Topic		Replies	Views
Resetting latest/activity after a post deletion? Feature	16	2434	September 6, 2025
Spam bumps old topic to top of the list Feature completed	2	919	July 30, 2025
Reset topic bump date after a reported post is deleted Feature reset-bump-date	5	899	July 30, 2025
Resurrected topics should go away when last post is deleted Bug	1	1026	March 24, 2017
Auto reset topic bump date when deleting last post Feature completed , reset-bump-date	9	1305	July 30, 2025

Old topic containing newly deleted post still appears at the top

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