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hgweber

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since i'm a newbie on this forum i hope i'm not out of line. i'd kindly suggest to configure the forum software in a way that deleting a thread-starting post does not delete the entire thread. i'm quite sure that almost any forum software does support such settings. 

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There's a difference between editing out the content of an opening post and deleting the post itself.

Not being too much of a delete myself, I don't know, maybe there's a popup that warns you that if you delete this post you delete the entire thread. Or maybe not. On the reare occasion I have to delete a thread (usually a duplicate), I do it as a moderator. No idea what the poster interface does. anybody have recent experience with that?

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Oh, for some reason I remembered him actually deleting the post. But you're right, he just edited it. 

I know on phpBB, and whatever Jazz Corner used to run on you couldn't delete an OP. Only edit it. Hell, on both of those you can even set individual posts to lock after a designated amount of time. So surely this software allows for all of those parameters to be set/changed. But only an admin or software tech would have access to that (as you already stated on the other thread). 

*edit*

vBulletin was the software JC ran on. 

Edited by Scott Dolan
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3 hours ago, hgweber said:

since i'm a newbie on this forum i hope i'm not out of line. i'd kindly suggest to configure the forum software in a way that deleting a thread-starting post does not delete the entire thread. i'm quite sure that almost any forum software does support such settings. 

Motion seconded. ;)

In fact, thinking about it, most of those other forums I visit(ed) where the problem of forumists deleting their posts (including their opening posts of a thread - sometimes) came up were forums based on pHpBB. And the way they were set up deleting a post actually meant EDITING your post, i.e. the contents disappeared but an empty post remained. I have seen threads where evidently certain posts were deleted altogether (making the remaining discussion even harder to understand) but IIRC except on one forum (where the forumists were able to completely delete their posts) these deletions were the result of admin/mod action. And the feature allowing forumists to really delete their posts was abandoned on that one forum after some time - just because this created havoc with the remaining posts that often made no sense anymore as afterwards nobody was able to figure out anymore who these posts were directed at. Replying to a preceding post that is empty now does not make that much more sense either but at least those who read those thread later will be able to see that originally ther WAS something supposed to be there. BTW, one approach I have often seen (and sometimes used too) in discussions that were likely to become heated and where you just figured somebody might back out was to reply QUOTING the post you replied to. Anybody can delete the contents of his posts but he cannot delete those contents of his posts that have been quoted by others (who have replied to him) in THEIR posts. ;)

Anyway ... wouldn't a feature allowing forumists just to EDIT their posts (including opening posts), i.e. removing just the contents, be sufficient?

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1 hour ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Anyway ... wouldn't a feature allowing forumists just to EDIT their posts (including opening posts), i.e. removing just the contents, be sufficient?

Pretty sure we have that now? I don't think you can post a blank box, but I think you can edit down to one?

You can definitely delete a post other than an opening one with no impact to anything else.

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Thanks for the clarification/confirmation but I was just referring to the thread starter's post about "deleting" a post which might as well be understood to mean that the post disappears altogether and no trace of a post remains. This is different from an "empty" post (having to leave at least one character would be the same thing IMO). I guess that a forum software could be set up both ways, including in the case of opening posts of a thread and editing these. I.e. setting up the forum software in such a way that a normal forumist (as opposed to a mod/admin) can only remove the contents of an earlier post (including the opening post) but not the post as such should eliminate the problem of somebody "deleting" the opening post and deleting the entire thread at the same time.

Edited by Big Beat Steve
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