"soft" merge or something like this

[jair101]

Please consider adding a soft merge or a similar option for topics. 

I agree that deleting is the most destructive operation, so it should have many safety nets to avoid content getting accidentally deleted. And we do have them! We have hiding, which is almost like deleting, we have soft delete with timeout, which also prevents clueless moderators from doing something they aren't supposed to do. Congrats on IPS for covering this base. 

However, merge is no less destructive to the forums content, but it doesn't have a single safety net. Right now if a topic is merged in to another one (lets say a new one with 1-2 posts to be merged in old mega topic) and if by mistake the new topic id/title is kept, all links pointing to posts in the original mega topic are gone. One mis-click can pretty much destroy a lot of backlinks you accumulated for a very long time. No way to reverse the process except restoring backup. 

On top of that the merge option is counter intuitive. When you initiate a merge, you usually want to merge a new topic in an old one, that means preserving the title and id of the old one! Right now if you want to do that is read the new topic, identify it needs to be merged in to old one, open the old one and initiate merge from there. Very, very confusing and cumbersome process. I try to educate my moderators, I tell them to pay attention to the merge message, but this is not enough. 

Please, do something about it. merge can be really destructive, it needs to be tamed somehow. 

 

[jair101]

I am surprised I am the only one bothered by this.

Oh well, I guess all it will take is a slightly smart disgruntled mod, who doesn't have delete permissions, but can have fun with merging all the topics in the community/forum/subforum in to a single one. 

[gabs007]

On 12/21/2018 at 8:20 PM, jair101 said:

On top of that the merge option is counter intuitive. When you initiate a merge, you usually want to merge a new topic in an old one, that means preserving the title and id of the old one! Right now if you want to do that is read the new topic, identify it needs to be merged in to old one, open the old one and initiate merge from there. Very, very confusing and cumbersome process. I try to educate my moderators, I tell them to pay attention to the merge message, but this is not enough. 

 

I agree 100% with you in this point.

Merge should work in both ways. You should be allowed to decide which title you want to keep from both topics. That would make things smoother.

 

Let me say that in one of my communities I used to merge a lot of content. 
I never had any issue, but I have to admit that none of those topics had a lot of replies and 99% of the times you keep the old topic, not the new one. So no backlinks lost.

On 12/21/2018 at 8:20 PM, jair101 said:

However, merge is no less destructive to the forums content, but it doesn't have a single safety net. Right now if a topic is merged in to another one (lets say a new one with 1-2 posts to be merged in old mega topic) and if by mistake the new topic id/title is kept, all links pointing to posts in the original mega topic are gone. One mis-click can pretty much destroy a lot of backlinks you accumulated for a very long time. No way to reverse the process except restoring backup. 

 

In order to avoid that, the system should  create some kind or redirect topic, like the ones created when you move a topic from a forum to another one.
During the merge process, the system should ask if you want to create a permanent relink.