I’d like to make I understand a new feature correctly, namely: the 'delete merged stub topics after days' setting, which is described as “Number of days to wait before automatically deleting fully merged stub topics. Set to 0 to never delete stub topics.” in the Other section of the site settings. Does this pertain to every situation described in 2014 by Sam Saffron in the ‘Moving a single post topic leave around the stub’ topic? Or does it only affect a more narrow set of cases?
A stub topic has only a first post, and no replies. All other replies (including the first post) have been merged into another topic, so the topic exists merely as a signpost pointing to the other topic.