Users unable to post corrected items after deletion

If a user accidentally creates a topic in the wrong category or inadvertently uses the post-voting plugin when they didn’t mean to the only option for the user to correct this is to delete and recreate the post under the correct category/with the corrected settings.

When they attempt to do this Discourse blocks them because the “title is in use” and the post content is too similar to their previously submitted post.

This should not happen. The original post is very clearly shown to have been deleted by the user and is only pending cleanup.

While this might prevent re-posts after a moderator has removed something posts deleted by the user themselves should be exempt from this check if the original post has had no replies yet.

Steps to reproduce:

  1. Create a post starting a new topic in one copy.
  2. (Realise that you are not a moderator, so can’t move the post and that the post-voting plugin can’t be disabled for a topic by anyone at all after it has been created.)
  3. Copy the post text to a text editor.
  4. Delete the original topic.
  5. Create a replacement post in the correct category and with the correct settings, using a copy of the original text.

What should happen:

  • Discourse recognises a “delete and redraft” and permits the corrected post.

What actually happens:

  • Discourse refuses to function until the post has been arbitrarily re-titled and padded with useless cruft to get around the “similarity” constraint.

This is a safety feature in Discourse.

The goal is to avoid spam. I think you can disable this safety feature?

1 Like

You are looking for allow duplicate topic titles and allow duplicate topic titles category site setting. It has to be checked :white_check_mark:

2 Likes

I see why you’d want to stop people posting the same thing again and again, but if they have already deleted it by themselves and the first post wasn’t around long enough to attract comments or a flag then it doesn’t seem like a very effective way to spam.