I recently started a thread at:
It isn't there anymore and I didn't get any notification about it being removed. Should I try to repost that? I got a badge from it (posting a link to another thread), so I know the forum system handled it.
That was me, @jpringle. We try not to have multiple posts with the same information because then the conservation is split in two places. I thought you'd get a notification, so apologies. Next time I'll leave a comment before deleting the topic.
I was soliciting ideas from other people with my thread. In your ideal world, how should I have done that? I suppose, @yanokwa, you deleted my initial thread because of the similar post that I linked to (or was it something else?): The ODK Collect Audit Feature
Should I have posted my question about how others were using the audit feature as a response that The ODK Collect Audit Feature ? Should we expect other people to go to a hijacked thread to continue that conversation? Should all conversation about the audit feature be a response to that thread where one person is basically saying how cool it is? That doesn't make any sense, so I hope you deleted my thread because it overlapped with another one.
Very good questions! I'll try to explain my rationale...
First, some definitions. In Discourse, there are no threads. Instead there are topics, and a topic is a collection of posts. A reply is a response to post.
In my ideal world, I would have preferred a new topic and either @mention the key people from the old topics or if there is only one old topic, reply to a post in the old topic and point people to the new topic. Generally, when I see a post that is a hijack or off-topic, I tend to split off that post and any replies into a new topic.
Ordinarily, I would have kept your new topic in favor of your reply in the old topic, but because your reply sat for a few days, it likely had notified people on that topic, so I deleted the new topic with the idea that maybe I'd come back and split off any conversation that happened on the old topic later.
But now that we are talking about it, maybe that wasn't the best option? Now that you have had a reply, I've undeleted your new topic and moved your post on the old topic (and the reply) there.
I dunno. I'm just trying to dedupe conversations, but keep them somewhat organized as they develop. It's more art than science. I'd love any feedback about what I should have done differently!
Hi @yanokwa, thanks for the explanation. It seems like the ideal solution has been achieved: to move the reply to the old topic to be a part of the new topic.
It is definitely important that topics don't disappear without explanation! I created the topic and sent the link to my team so we all could follow up at a later time. Imagine the surprise when they got a 404.
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