Sometimes it’s tough to tell what action to take when you don’t want/need your whole community seeing a certain post. Anyone have general rules of thumb for when you perform each action within your community?
Close: discussion is too contentious, not going in a productive direction, endless.
Delete: discussion is harmful / hurtful, went in a flat out wrong direction, needs to be restarted from square zero
Unlist: Possible security implications, or not of general interest to the wider audience at all, highly specific to one person
Make PM: same as unlist, but “safer” since nobody can visit the URL any more. If you will need personal or intimate details to go further, probably a wise choice vs Unlist.
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I’d also add that close is frequently used when discussion is done - i.e. a question that has a conclusive answer, a support request that has been solved/resolved, etc.
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Interesting, that’s really helpful. I had the same thoughts about PM and Unlist but I still haven’t formulated an official guideline for Close and Delete so this is a good starting point.
One other option you did not list: change the category. If you have a category with restricted permissions (like the default lounge and staff categories), changing the category will prevent those without permissions from seeing and/or replying to the topic.
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Also see this:
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