Why do some first posts get locked?

It has happened more than once now on our forum that the first time I see a new post, it is already locked. I am unable to figure out how it might have gotten locked. I am posting here in the hope of getting some tips about what might be happening.

  • Can normal users (not moderators) lock their own posts?
  • The moderation history is empty. If another moderator had locked it (by accident), if would show in the history, right?
  • Does the system auto-lock first posts which appear to be of low quality? The locked ones were like this.
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Normal users cant lock their topics.

The topic can be lock depending on what is set in the category settings.

There is also a setting in admin settings that can lock a topic if an staff member edit this topic.

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A user can dustbin the OP if there are no replies. This locks the topic. It should replace the OP text with ā€˜topic deleted by authorā€™, or something similar. I think that leaves an edit history though.

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Thanks for the quick responses!

(Most) other posts in the same category did not get locked, so I donā€™t think thatā€™s it. I checked the category settings and found ā€œAuto-close topic after: ā€¦ minsā€. It is not enabled.

I found this as well, and it is not enabled.

I have seen this before, and indeed it looks different. As in your screenshot, it shows (topic deleted by author). In this case, the topic simply had a padlock icon next to it, but otherwise everything looked usual, and there was no sign of an edit history.


Any other ideas?

Maybe itā€™s best if I link the topic here: https://igraph.discourse.group/t/how-should-i-do-for-reducing-graph-object-memory-usage/909 (Itā€™s already unlocked though.)

At the moment itā€™s not a big deal, as itā€™s only the second time I notice it, and it was easy to unlock the topic. But Iā€™d like to avoid unnecessary frustration for our forum users, so itā€™d be good to understand what is happening.

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There are a few suggestions in this topic, though Iā€™m not sure a definitive answer was found:

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@IAmGav Was this you? Test please ignore - Usage - igraph support forum Well, you seemed to manage to trigger the auto-lock.

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That is me.

Nothing happened until I deleted my post.

So itā€™s something todo when a new user deletes the post

What version of discourse are you on ?

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Thanks for testing!

Did you delete, then undelete again? It does not seem to show the usual (topic deleted by author).

Either way, this explains what happened. Thanks so much!

It seems to be Discourse 2.8.0.beta6. This is an installation managed by Discourse-the-company on the discourse.group domain, so I never had to deal with updating, or even checking the version.

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If I delete it, it locks the post, but donā€™t change the text.

If I Undelete it, it unlocks the post.

I smell a :beetle:

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For future reference, it looks like this to me (no sign of deletion):

This is good news. It means that the user whose post get locked will be aware of what happened, and will be able to ā€œunlockā€ it themselves.

I think all is good (and I assume the Discourse people will fix it eventually).

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Now that we have screenshots and know how to replicate this issue, please go ahead and delete that post :grin:

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