[SUG] Reuse Deleted Topic IDs

[mld11]

It's not that big of a deal, but when your topic IDs approach 19,000 when you only have 3,000 topics... it looks kind of dumb. The trash can is a big help, every time a post is deleted, it's turned into a topic.

Is there any way to configure a database to reuse unused IDs?; same with Forums, Usergroups and Skins? It would be nice to get back to Usergroup ID 16, not 39. I know you can manually change Usergroup IDs (safer when no one exists in the group).

[Josh]

I don't expect that we would ever do this, there's too many possibilities for it to go wrong and there's no danger to having a long topic id.

[Wolfie]

Why would you want to? They're nothing more than just numbers which are more important internally anyways.

Also with a higher topic #, that in itself can be said to show more board activity. What board do you think has had more business, ones with the highest topic number is 1000, or 10000?

[Mark]

You could always alter the table to adjust the current auto_increment value.

Although, as I'm sure you'll hear from everyone who reads this - you seriously don't want to ;)
As an analogy - when someone's phone line is disconnected, they don't reassign that number to someone else - same principle.

[sunrisecc]

As an analogy - when someone's phone line is disconnected, they don't reassign that number to someone else - same principle.

Weak analogy - it is reassigned with a minimum wait of three months (usually more).

I prefer the analogy of a credit card number. It is never re-assigned after cancellation.

[Wolfie]

I prefer the analogy of a credit card number. It is never re-assigned after cancellation.

How about social security numbers.. Once the owner expires, they don't reassign the number (or at least they're not supposed to).

[Charles]

Not to mention search engines would get very confused when the content of post ID X suddenly changed after a while.