# What happens to replies when a Scheduled topic is published?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** topic-timers
**Created:** [July 21, 2023, 9:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928 "2023-07-21T21:29:15Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [July 21, 2023, 9:29pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928/1 "2023-07-21T21:29:15Z")
When a scheduled topic is published, what happens to replies to that topic?
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### Author:  [@simon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/simon)
#### Post date: [July 22, 2023, 12:03am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928/2 "2023-07-22T00:03:34Z")
Replies are published along with the topic. If replies are whispers, they will be published as whisper posts. That could be useful if you want to have a private discussion about the topic prior to publishing it.
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2023, 2:50pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928/3 "2023-07-25T14:50:38Z")
What happens to the date of the replies? Do they become older than the first post? If so, this has two obvious problems and one less-obvious one:
1. It is kind of confusing.
2. It reveals that the topic was private and some subset of people had prior discussion (and gives an indication of how long)
3. If, in the future, a different topic is merged into the scheduled one and “preserve chronological order” is selected, \_one of those replies will suddenly become the “OP”
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### Author:  [@mattdm](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mattdm)
#### Post date: [July 25, 2023, 2:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928/4 "2023-07-25T14:51:25Z")
> [@simon](#):
>
> Replies are published along with the topic. If replies are whispers, they will be published as whisper posts. That could be useful if you want to have a private discussion about the topic prior to publishing it.
For what it’s worth, I think a “delete all replies when publishing” checkbox would be a lovely addition to this.
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### Author:  [@JammyDodger](https://meta.discourse.org/u/JammyDodger)
#### Post date: [July 26, 2023, 7:23am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-happens-to-replies-when-a-scheduled-topic-is-published/272928/5 "2023-07-26T07:23:38Z")
> [@mattdm](#):
>
> What happens to the date of the replies? Do they become older than the first post?
I believe the replies all get the same date as the OP. Not sure on how that interacts with the new ‘preserve chronology’ merge feature, but I’ll give it a test. 🙂 It’s still a bit of a giveaway that it’s not accrued replies in the normal fashion though.
* * *
I’ve given it a test run and the replies all got the same timestamp as the OP when it was published. However, when I created a new topic and merged the post into the Scheduled one it didn’t affect the existing order and do anything weird when I selected to preserve the chronology. 👍