I’m setting up a new forum and one thing I’ve found odd so far is that pinning and closing topics both count as replies.
While I understand that closing a topic is a kind of response to a topic, it is not a reply like typing a response is and generates a false sense of activity.
Is there a way for this to be disabled (so such mod actions don’t count)?
This is only reported for people that are watching the topic, so it should not be an issue for people who have the topic at tracking or normal notification levels. Presumably if you are watching a topic – the highest notification level – you are interested in big changes in the topic like being pinned or closed.
Still, users who are tracking a topic will see the close being shown as a new reply.
One might argue that’s expected – I usually find it irritating (I track virtually every topic on Meta).
I’m not sure I understand the purpose of tracking every topic. But that aside, wouldn’t you want to know when a topic has been closed? This way, once closed, you know you can simply stop tracking/watching it. What’s the point in tracking/watching a closed topic?
I have wondered if keeping Track / Watch on closed topics might affect performance.
But I have seen closed topics re-opened and I would be interested in that event.
Same with topics that get archived, though I don’t think un-archiving a topic happens enough to even call it a rare event.
Exactly. Also, staff can still post in closed topics, which isn’t even that rare here.
I’m simply trying to read every new post on Meta, which is why I keep all topics considered new until read, and auto-track them on open 
Alright, fair enough. That’s some dedication right there. 
I do the same on the Discourse forum I use. It can sometimes be disappointing to think “Oh, a moderator replied to this thread! I wonder what their outlook is?” only to be met with “Oh… They just closed it…” These things should still send out notifications, but we can already see the lock/pin symbols next to the thread name. We don’t need a new post for us to be able to tell what changed.
Except you don’t know if you read every post in the topic before it was closed or if has some unread posts before it was closed until you go to it.
IMHO the click isn’t any trouble at all and I like knowing the topics resolution
Maybe it would bother me if my use flow wasn’t read to bottom - go to a suggested - repeat until caught up - go to home. But everything is more than fine with me as it is now.
BTW I Watch a lot of categories here.
The locked/pinned icons are there regardless of how many unread posts are in the topic. I haven’t even opened this topic, but I can tell it’s locked:
There are posts I haven’t read on this topic yet, but I can still tell it’s pinned:
Then you’ll like not replying for pinning/closing. Either way you can tell if the topic is locked/pinned or has new replies, but only with not replying for pinning/closing can you tell at a glance if the latest post is an admins’ thoughts on the topic. With replies you can’t tell if the final post by an admin is the thread being locked or an actual response.
I know the feel – I watch every single category on the Discourse forum I use.
I’m not advocating for a change at this point, but I will say that more often than not, being notified about a topic getting closed is just noise to me. I also never liked the fact closing/re-opening a topic increments the page-count widget.
You’re probably noticing because you watch all topics, like I do, but that’s an exceedingly rare state. On Boing Boing for example I never see topics get closed – because I don’t watch that many topics there.
It is also reflected in the reply count # in the topic list. 
Exactly, this is the problem… I just had a user contact us saying, “Finding replies is really confusing! I see this note that the new topic has 1 reply, but I can’t find it!”
It’s fine enough for it to act like a reply in terms of notifications or whatever, but counting it is the confusing problem.
I don’t care about notifications, but why does the reply count increase when I pin a topic? This is very confusing - users expect to see a reply when they click a topic with one reply.
Moderator actions show up as “small action posts”
I understand the technical reason - I’m saying moderator actions should not increase the “post count”. Users get confused when they click on a topic with two messages, and there is only one:
(The number increased to 2 when post was turned into a banner).
Possible technical solution: when counting messages, ignore moderator actions.
Unlisting a topic counts as a reply, which means that Jay’s “automatic deletion of unreplied topics after x days” plugin doesn’t work for them. Of course, most people can’t see them so the phantom reply doesn’t matter too much otherwise.
