Revamping the Forum

[BeeAPeach]

@junaruga

I guess Framework members on the admin role receive the email notifications on the any changes of the forum in the default set

@junaruga Admins/myself have emails turned off, it was reported to me by others that they were getting notified and why I reached out. People were getting emails regarding the initial revamp which is unfortunate but we needed to change categories eventually so it was sadly bound to happen. My goal is to cut back on that as much as possible going forward and why I reached out to you letting you know to let me handle it going forward. Naturally we don’t ever mind the help or will ever mind. It’s just something I wish to be cautious about to not email too many users at a time which no one would have known until people started mentioning it was happening

As for the SQL query, thank you for letting us know! A lot of these posts are old so most will not need to change them. But, if that’s the case, we would have no issue changing anything if they reach out!

[junaruga]

Okay. I will not change the category by myself. I will wait for Framework to do something to change the threads category.

@BeeAPeach

As for the SQL query, thank you for letting us know! A lot of these posts are old so most will not need to change them. But, if that’s the case, we would have no issue changing anything if they reach out!

I am not sure why you think if the thread is old, you don’t need to change the category correctly. It doesn’t mean the thread info is wrong. Even when the info is old, but it is still new info for people who search threads by keywords.

For example, you can see threads with the title including “Linux” on the “Framework Laptop” category here. It’s not so many. One of the threads Garuda Linux on Framework? created at October 2021 was previously on “Linux” category, now “Framework Laptop” category by the latest change. So, if we don’t change this thread’s category to “Linux”, it triggers that someone will create this kind of thread related to Garuda Linux on “Linux” category in the future. Then maybe moderators have to work to merge the threads.

The threads created by @Twistgibber are here. I think those info are still important for people who don’t know the info. Do you think you don’t need to change the threads’ category, because it is old? But the info is still not outdated, right? I expect Framework changes the thread category to Customer Experiences Updates category. Why don’t you change just the 3 threads?

I live in a clean, tidy and functional room. That makes me to work effectively. And I wish that for this forum space too.

[JacobFavreault]

On mobile I am able to use the Brave Night Mode and it looks pretty good… Not sure exactly the method Brave uses to dark-ify light websites, but maybe that could be applied here?
I don’t use Discourse as a tool so I’m not sure of the capabilities that you are given, though.

[junaruga]

@JacobFavreault

On mobile I am able to use the Brave Night Mode and it looks pretty good… Not sure exactly the method Brave uses to dark-ify light websites, but maybe that could be applied here?

Maybe the browser is just replacing the color setting written by the CSS on the client side. By the way, the dark mode thread is A request for dark mode as a reference.

[BeeAPeach]

@junaruga

I am not sure why you think if the thread is old, you don’t need to change the category correctly.

Unfortunately, I think there is a miscommunication between us. I think all posts are important. However, given the reset, I plan on going through and finding the most important posts to list in the Linux category. Doing it for all of the posts that once had the subcategory is unfortunately just not feasible and I would not like to do that until we can possibly find a better solution.

When I meant not needing to change them, I meant on the users end, not ours. If posts are very old and untouched, it is unlikely they have edits and if they do, we are here to help!

As for the TwistGibbers posts, that is a bit different as they are employee communications and I am still going through and updating those categories. I am only just one person, however and why feedback is so important in case I do miss things!

I definitely understand that you want a tidy forum and we wish the absolute same! Unfortunately, things will take time as we grow and make changes. we just ask that you bare with us, thank you and we absolutely appreciate everything you have done for the community thus far

[junaruga]

Maybe the following bulk operation on Discourse database is to change the threads (topics) selected by a specific conditions to a sub category. I wish someone will pass my comment to a Software Engineer at Framework.

The following documents are a clue to imagine how the related database tables looks like.
[1] A update operation " Move all topics with a specific tag to a single category" by a Ruby script with Ruby on Rails library: Administrative Bulk Operations - sysadmin - Discourse Meta . This example is to list up the topic id list including a specific tag, but we can apply this way to update the category id of the table data by listing up a specific topic id list.
[2] A update operation " Update a topic" by Web API: Discourse API Docs - This Web API shows how the topic table look like. Seeing the Discourse GitHub source, I couldn’t find the database schema related to topic and category, but you can check it by sending the SQL query.

Here are the steps to update threads (topics) including “Linux” in the title on “Framework Laptop” category to change the category to “Framework - Linux” sub category. I have not tested it by myself. But I can imagine it is typical Rails tables + PostgreSQL.

1. Find the “Linux” sub category id from the category table. Refer [1].

2. List up possible topic (thread) id list, then pick up the right threads “manually”. Or you still have a log by the script you used to change the category on the initial revamping, you can list up necessary topic id list to change.

   SELECT id FROM topic WHERE category_id = <"Framework Laptop" category id> and title like "%Linux%;
   

3. Maybe the SQL is like this. Run the following kind of SQL. Don’t forget to update the stats (the topic counts of the affected categories) after that. Refer [1].

   BEGIN;
   UPDATE topic SET category_id = <"Linux" (sub) category id> WHERE id IN (NN1, NN2, ...);
   <A SQL to update the stats info on the topic.>
   <A SQL to confirm the result, like SELECT ...>
   COMMIT;
   

I am not sure if these steps trigger the email notification to users. Maybe you are using PostgreSQL, and I think that a script to send the email notification might be executed on the database level when the topic table data is updated, as a possibility. But you can check it.

But it’s worth to try it on staging or development environment. Or you can ask how to create a SQL query to achieve this and the way not to send the email notification on the Discourse forum https://meta.discourse.org/ . Good luck! I hope your 2nd revamping script program will be success.