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Can I remove the "@someone deleted this topic n seconds ago" message?

By Jason @detly
    2018-05-26 14:56:07.551Z

    I tested out the comments on a local instance of my site. I ended up with:

    • A new topic (comments for page at ...)
    • Comments on this new topic

    So I deleted the comments, and then (to see what happens) I deleted the topic. Now I have a seemingly permanent message at the bottom of the comments section:

    I can't seem to get rid of it! Any ideas?

    Reply
    • 5 replies
    1. KajMagnus @KajMagnus2018-05-26 15:36:29.780Z

      Currently no way to remove it. This is something I should fix

      Maybe deleted-page and undeleted-page messages, in embedded comments topics, should be shown to staff only, with a "this message visible to staff only" clarification. Then if you clicked "Tools" and then "Restore page", the @nnn deleted this topic message would disappear.

      Actually, what should happen, when an embedded comments page has been deleted. I suppose that, for normal visitors, no comments at all, should be shown. Just an empty iframe, as if there was no comments section? Showing any text like "Comments deleted" would look weird, I imagine. ... And the way the page looks now, with @nnn deleted this topics but the Reply button still visible, is even more weird :- P (this is a situation I hadn't thought about :- ))

      For admins, the deleted comments page could be shown, with the page-deleted message you're seeing now, + info that the page is visible to staff only, + a button to undelete the page?

      (If you want a quick workaround, you can set data-discussion-id="" to something else, on the <div class="talkyard-comments" ...>, and a new comments page will get used.)

      Reply
      1. DJason @detly
          2018-05-26 22:03:35.587Z

          Well the intent wasn't to prevent comments, although I can see how someone might think it was. I just wanted to see what would happen. Note that I can still comment on a page which has had its topic deleted! It just seems to create another topic.

          I just discovered the "Tools > Restore topic" feature you mentioned, which at least makes it clearer. Personally I think it

          This is all a bit moot since I suspect my local comments won't show up when my site is accessed via its public URL (which is good). But it might be frustrating in the future.

          I can certainly see how it would be useful in a dedicated forum — you'd want users to know that a topic has disappeared for a reason, not just wonder what happened. And perhaps then undeletion needs to be flagged too. However, I'd suggest one of two things:

          • Show only deletion messages when the topic has not later been restored. That is, delete/restore messages should cancel out. If an admin restores a previously deleted topic, they could manually add a comment explaining what happened, or leave it and nothing will appear.

          • Allow admins to enter a public message when deleting or restoring a topic. If the message is empty, don't even show the deletion/restoration message.

          If the point of deleting an "embedded comments" topic is to block comments on an article, then:

          1. There's a bug, because it doesn't do this, and
          2. It might not be necessary, most static site generators that I know of have a flag in the post preamble that allows disabling comments by removing that part of the page altogether.

          These are just suggestions — a couple of admin messages appearing in the comments isn't a travesty for me.

          Reply
          1. KajMagnus @KajMagnus2018-06-08 01:54:58.304Z

            Hi again!

            About commenting on deleted topic: Only staff can do that. I'm thinking maybe a moderator might want to 1) delete the topic, then 2) add a comment that explains to the other staff members, why s/he deleted the topic. (Deleted topics/discussions = only visible to staff b.t.w.)

            Ok thanks for the info that you were trying things out. I made a change, so when a topic gets deleted, there're now big letters "Discussion deleted" and the discussion gets crossed out with a large X cross. So now should be more obvious what has happened.

            Show only deletion messages when the topic has not later been restored

            ok yes good idea. I think that's the right thing to do, if the topic got restored within, say, 1 hour after it got deleted. ... If however it stayed deleted for 1 month, and then was restored — then I think in most cases, it'd be helpful to people to see the Deleted and Restored messages, so they'll know that it was gone for real for a while (and not that they visited the wrong page or something).

            [...] [adminis] could manually add a comment explaining what happened, or leave it and nothing will appear.
            [...] enter a public message when deleting or restoring a topic. If the message is empty, don't even show the deletion/restoration message.

            I think being able to delete the "Deleted ... Restored" messages, would suffice: admins can already add "bottom comments" that explain why they deleted / restored the topic.

            If the point of deleting an "embedded comments" topic is to block comments on an article, then:
            There's a bug, because it doesn't do this, and

            Ok, hmm, maybe there should be a message that only saff/admins can add comments to deleted topics. Or is at weird thing, to be able to do that at all, even if one is a staff member, hmm.

            most static site generators that I know of have a flag in the post preamble that allows disabling comments by removing that part of the page altogether.

            Yes, and at the same time, I think it's nice for admins to have a way to delete the discussion, without having to re-publish their site. Maybe they edit their blog and publish to GitHub/Netlify/etc, from their laptop at home only, ... then nice to then be able to quick-"kill" a discussion that derails, when on the subway, from their mobile phone.

            These are just suggestions — a couple of admin messages appearing in the comments isn't a travesty for me.

            Ok :-) & thanks for the suggestions (sorry for being a bit late with replying sometimes)

            Reply
            1. SSascha Zelzer @saschazelzer
                2021-08-29 21:01:50.482Z

                I stumbled across this recenty, so I thought I'd share my thoughts:

                When testing a comments-enabled blog locally, discussion topics got created for http://localhost:4000/<id> where <id> is a placeholder for the page title which is automatically set by my static site generator (Jekyll). Obviously I didn't want to keep the test comments when going live so I faced two issues:

                1. Deleting a whole topic in the admin area lead to a stale loading comments message (on my mobile phone, didn't test other devices much yet). No commenting was possible anymore.

                2. I then undeleted that topic and deleted all the comments there. Now I am seeing the @sascha deleted this topic .... messages, which seem out of place for a blog post which was never commented on in production. Changing the <id> is not a nice solution in this case, because it would introduce a special case where the regular blog post title can not be used anymore.

                I'd like to make two suggestions:

                1. Don't reuse topics if the URL's mismatch and the domain name is not listed in the "Allow embedding from" settings. I guess this is only possible currently for localhost anyway. Especially in this case, I think there should be a good way to delete a topic in order to get rid of test comments without using up topic ids.

                2. Don't show the ... deleted this topic ... message to users who are neither admins nor the author of the deleted comment. I might be missing some corner case, but the information about some comments having been deleted seems irrelevant for other users. Maybe this could be made configurable in the admin area (showing a "deleted" message or not).

                Thanks,
                Sascha

                Reply1 Like
                1. KajMagnus @KajMagnus2021-09-14 12:56:44.799Z2021-09-14 13:23:24.381Z

                  Hi Sascha, I think those are good suggestions. Thanks for writing about this (sorry for the late reply).

                  Maybe for now Talkyard could just skip generating those "deleted this topic" meta posts. They aren't that important anyway, are they.

                  Changing the [blog post URL path] is not a nice solution

                  Agreed about that. (Please note that what you refer to as the <id>, I refer to as the URL path.)

                  I'd want some config fields, for each embedded discussion, where the admin can edit the URL paths (<id>s in your post) that map to that discussion.
                  Then you could have clicked a Change blog post URL button, and maybe just delete the URL, or change it from /the-blog-post to /old-test-page.

                  Thereafter, the blog post would no longer have any discussion associated with it, and Talkyard would auto generate a new discussion page, for that blog post, when someone posts a new comment.

                  Don't reuse topics if the URL's mismatch and the domain name is not listed in the "Allow embedding from" settings.

                  Hmm. Often sometimes migrate their blogs from one domain, to another. And then they want the old URL paths to still point to the same Talkyard discussions, although the old domain is no longer in use. — But maybe localhost could be an exception.

                  there should be a good way to delete a topic in order to get rid of test comments without using up topic ids

                  Agreed. Talkyard could ignore deleted pages, when looking up by URL path. (This cannot be fixed "super quickly", because there's a database unique index that currently prevents two embedded discussion pages from having the same URL paths, even if one of them is deleted.)

                  ***

                  Now I changed this topic to Problem and Plan to fix.

                  Reply
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