# Why I cannot delete my topic
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [2017年九月10日 12:57 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752 "2017-09-10T12:57:46Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Bank\_Live](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Bank_Live)
#### Post date: [2017年九月10日 12:57 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/1 "2017-09-10T12:57:46Z")
And my website is same problem.
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### Author:  [@fefrei](https://meta.discourse.org/u/fefrei)
#### Post date: [2017年九月10日 13:01 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/2 "2017-09-10T13:01:34Z")
In Discourse, users can delete replies, but not whole topics. This is intentional: Deleting topics can cause too much harm, for example when a user is already composing a reply.
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### Author:  [@Bank\_Live](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Bank_Live)
#### Post date: [2017年九月10日 13:05 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/3 "2017-09-10T13:05:20Z")
Ok Thank you very much.
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2017年九月11日 09:25 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/4 "2017-09-11T09:25:03Z")
This is the 2nd report I’ve seen of this “issue” in the last 7 days. One thing that might help would be to show the delete button on the first post but pop up a modal explaining why they can’t delete the topic and how to contact staff if they _really_ want to delete it.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2017年九月11日 09:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/5 "2017-09-11T09:27:32Z")
Sure good idea feel free to make it so.
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### Author:  [@Bank\_Live](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Bank_Live)
#### Post date: [2017年九月11日 15:20 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/7 "2017-09-11T15:20:08Z")
Good idea. I think there should be a description for them when they want to delete posts. 😃
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### Author:  [@icanhasr00t](https://meta.discourse.org/u/icanhasr00t)
#### Post date: [2017年九月12日 00:03 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/8 "2017-09-12T00:03:17Z")
I personally believe there should be this feature available and let amins/members decide to use or not.
In my site, some users wanted to have this with many valid reasons. After some discussions and a poll, we have decided to let OP deletes own topics only and only if there is no replies.
I have enabled the delete button on topics and set a good old cron job shooting a query into Postgres every hour.
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2018年七月18日 21:32 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/11 "2018-07-18T21:32:14Z")
@maja added the modal explaining why the user can’t delete their topic and what to do in
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/6086](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/6086)
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### Author:  [@trobiyo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/trobiyo)
#### Post date: [2018年七月18日 21:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/12 "2018-07-18T21:54:40Z")
> [@icanhasr00t](#):
>
> I personally believe there should be this feature available and let amins/members decide to use or not.
I totally agree with @icanhasr00t. For buy/selling communities this would be super useful, removing the need for admin/moderatos to be worried about deleting every single item that was sold as consequence of being flagged by the user. (Honestly, it’s a bit hard to remove ~100 topics per day, when at some point could exist the possibility of automate this).
Wouldn’t be possible to create a new global setting, allowing tls users to remove topics, including all posts, all likes, everything behind in case there are? I’m sure it will be much appreciated.
I also like the way of warning users with a modal dialog ;-), but…
Cheers,
Ismael
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2018年七月19日 04:23 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/13 "2018-07-19T04:23:05Z")
You bring up a good point, you could allow users to delete their own topics via a site setting if you are OK with the replies getting deleted along with them.
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### Author:  [@trobiyo](https://meta.discourse.org/u/trobiyo)
#### Post date: [2018年七月19日 07:24 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/14 "2018-07-19T07:24:25Z")
I was hitting my mind, and even I thought that can be considered to send a notification everytime a user deletes a topic (and the posts/likes that come along with), as it’s done when a user flags a topic for deletion. The setting `delete removed posts after` can be taken into account , so that before that period, an administrator could revoke the deletion action performed by a user.
This new setting of course would come disabled by default, let’s say following the phylosophy of discourse forums, but will range new discourse approaches and will leave admins/moderators more time to focus on other developments.
Is this considered to come included in the core in the short/long term? FMHO, this should be re-considered. I know this a recurrent question, and I read tons of posts about this topic, but it’s a matter of ranging more scenarios within the wonderful world of Discourse.
Cheers,
Ismael
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### Author:  [@zogstrip](https://meta.discourse.org/u/zogstrip)
#### Post date: [2018年七月19日 16:00 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-i-cannot-delete-my-topic/69752/15 "2018-07-19T16:00:02Z")
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