Merging Threads Technical Issue

[Cfleet1]

Whenever we merge a thread into another....it only moves the OP. The rest of the posts end up as post comments...within that one post after the merge. Its odd. Been this way for a while now. I just never really cared as i can simply move posts into an existing thread or create new.

But im just wondering if its an easy fix?

[Mrs.T]

This is happening to us too.

we don’t very often merge threads but it used to work fine.

We recently merged two threads and it did what you described and put the replies as comments, yet we have comments turned OFF!

[Carrfixr]

This has always happened, and was told it is by design. If you do it one post at a time, they will remain as replies and will not turn into comments. Things will post by order of date so be aware of that. Yes it is a royal pia doing it one by one

[Mrs.T]

This has always happened, and was told it is by design. If you do it one post at a time, they will remain as replies and will not turn into comments. Things will post by order of date so be aware of that. Yes it is a royal pia doing it one by one

thanks Carrfixr crazy design if you don’t use comments! But as I say rare that we merge so will remember your advice if we do

[Mark.B]

It is indeed by design as posts use a hierarchical structure:

-- Topic starter
-- -- Replies
-- -- -- Comments

So if you move a topic starter and its replies into a different thread, everything goes down a level - the topic starter becomes a reply and a reply to it becomes a comment (as it is now a reply to a reply, not a reply to a topic starter).

I hope that makes sense.

[Mrs.T]

It is indeed by design as posts use a hierarchical structure:

-- Topic starter
-- -- Replies
-- -- -- Comments

So if you move a topic starter and its replies into a different thread, everything goes down a level - the topic starter becomes a reply and a reply to it becomes a comment (as it is now a reply to a reply, not a reply to a topic starter).

I hope that makes sense.

Yes it does thanks Mark

[In Omnibus]

It is indeed by design as posts use a hierarchical structure:

-- Topic starter
-- -- Replies
-- -- -- Comments

So if you move a topic starter and its replies into a different thread, everything goes down a level - the topic starter becomes a reply and a reply to it becomes a comment (as it is now a reply to a reply, not a reply to a topic starter).

I hope that makes sense.

While this makes logical sense, if you have comments disabled you don't want replies becoming comments under any circumstances.

[Cfleet1]

Ok thanks. I just move all posts from the thread including the OP into an existing. Thats how i merge. lol. If you want to reverse the merge i select the OP and all the posts in the comments. Then move them to a new thread. Then redo it. By selecting all posts including the op....and then moving them in to the thread you were trying to merge them in anyways.

[Wayne Luke]

While this makes logical sense, if you have comments disabled you don't want replies becoming comments under any circumstances.

So what should we do? Delete the replies that will become comments? That is exactly what will happen if the system shouldn't display comments under any circumstances.

Merging topics is fraught with problems anyway since everything is usually ordered by publish time. Merging everything as Replies will definitely ruin any ongoing conversation in a topic. Things will be out of order, context will be ruined, and little will make sense anymore.

[Mark.B]

I have often participated on forums where the staff are obsessed with constantly merging topics.

It's incredibly irritating and I wish they wouldn't do it quite so much.

[In Omnibus]

So what should we do? Delete the replies that will become comments? That is exactly what will happen if the system shouldn't display comments under any circumstances.

Merging topics is fraught with problems anyway since everything is usually ordered by publish time. Merging everything as Replies will definitely ruin any ongoing conversation in a topic. Things will be out of order, context will be ruined, and little will make sense anymore.

I would never suggest any action which automatically deletes content without the full knowledge and consent of the primary super administrator, so, no, that was not the implication. But, if comments are disabled, and replies become comments, then effectively you have killed the discussion merging topics where this is the end result because no one has permissions to reply to comments in any case or event.

I'm not a developer. I'm an end user. So, since you asked, "what should we do?", my suggestion would be to consider a different order of magnitude for comments.

If topics are node x then replies should be node x.x and comments should be node x.x.x

As it stands now replies are on the same level as topics and comments are one level below. If replies were one level below and comments were two levels below then they could be merged and maintain replies as replies and comments ans comments. Theoretically.

How difficult this is to implement in practice is beyond my scope of knowledge.

But anything that kills a discussion is bad for forums. That was my initial point.

[Wayne Luke]

In the database, there is no difference between a topic starter, reply, or comment. You will find no indication of these "levels" in the node table. Just their content type and their immediate parent. The only difference is who their immediate parent is. That determines how they are displayed. The system actually keeps track of all generations of nodes in the closure table including their ancestry and the depth below Home (node id: 1) they are.

When you merge two topics, you're changing the parent(s) of one or more of the merged posts. Likewise, if you split topics then you're changing the parent of the posts that get split out. If you split out a post with a dozen comments on it, those comments will be displayed as Replies. If you split a single comment to become a topic, it will become a topic with all the features of a topic starter.

When moving nodes they haven't changed. They just have new parents. It is a fairly complicated content management system used in thousands of different ways.

[In Omnibus]

In the database, there is no difference between a topic starter, reply, or comment. You will find no indication of these "levels" in the node table. Just their content type and their immediate parent. The only difference is who their immediate parent is. That determines how they are displayed. The system actually keeps track of all generations of nodes in the closure table including their ancestry and the depth below Home (node id: 1) they are.

When you merge two topics, you're changing the parent(s) of one or more of the merged posts. Likewise, if you split topics then you're changing the parent of the posts that get split out. If you split out a post with a dozen comments on it, those comments will be displayed as Replies. If you split a single comment to become a topic, it will become a topic with all the features of a topic starter.

When moving nodes they haven't changed. They just have new parents. It is a fairly complicated content management system used in thousands of different ways.

So, if I understand this correctly, a topic is a parent, a reply is a child of the topic, and a comment is a child of the reply. So, a comment should still be the child of the reply to which it was posted in every case. This makes perfect logical sense and yet still doesn't prevent replies from becoming comments.

Maybe there could be a field to manually enter the parent node ID in cases where oddities occur. Maybe the vast majority of customers keep comments enabled, in which case it's not a priority.

[Wayne Luke]

Posts are mutable. They will be Topic Starters, Replies, and Comments depending on where they currently sit in the hierarchy. Three different views of exactly the same thing depending on the parent.

If a reply remains a reply, then its comments will remain comments. If a reply becomes a topic, its comments will always become replies. If a topic becomes a reply to another post, its replies become comments. worse, any comments to those replies will not be shown. The system will not show infinite layers in discussions. It was worse in vBulletin 4.X. Everything became a reply of the starter post in the topic it was merged into. Even if the reply had a time stamp earlier than the Starter. Though there were no comments to worry about.

Merging topics really is bad mojo all around and I would discourage it but some people still use it.

[In Omnibus]

Merging topics really is bad mojo all around and I would discourage it but some people still use it.

This is where I agree with both you and Mark. I would rather delete a duplicate topic and make the user post in the existing discussion than spend time and energy merging topics and having users argue that their topic wasn't the same as the one into which it was merged. But if there are functions and features in the software someone will use them.