Question Disable trash

Is there a way to disable the trash feature? I've never regretted deleting a thread, and the new feature just creates a lot of additional steps for me, so I'd like to disable it and have posts truly deleted immediately.

Cheers,

Phil

PS....sorry, no idea how this ended up in the common questions section. I was in the support section when I posted.

Hello,

Actually, there is no way to disable trash, but you can use the delete perminantly posts :

OK thanks. Would love to see disable trash as an option in the future.

Cheers,

Phil

G'day, Phil. Allow me to explain why sometimes user's messages are moved from the categories where they were originally posted.

Our job as moderators is to put people in touch with information that will help them quickly and help them quicker.

Our top priority is to attend to support questions. Particularly when a new version of Kunena is released, the incidence of problems escalates. Most of these problems have nothing to do with anything that's actually defective within the Kunena product; most of them are actually questions asking for explanations for how to do something or requests to change a working feature because one user doesn't need it. Our main objective in tacking the support questions as our highest priority is to ensure that the occasional defect, that slips past the testing team, does not become a widespread problem for the community.

For this reason, we ask our users to understand that we're very busy, working behind-the-scenes, trying to make sure that defects are fixed quickly and to produce maintenance releases of those fixes. We therefore ask our users to keep the support category for important matters where Kunena does not work as it was designed to do or as the release notes and Wiki documentation suggest that it was intended to do. The "message trash" feature was designed the way it was more than 8 months ago. We wrote about this message trash feature, we clearly stated that this was an intentional design feature, throughout that time.

Therefore the message trash feature is supposed to be there, in K 1.6. If it doesn't work then that's a reason to ask for support but, as it appears to work your question is more of a request to change something or a request for information how you might be able to understand better how to use the feature. In other words, your question, like so many others posted here, was not a report about something broken or defective or "buggy". If people suspect that they have something broken/defective/"buggy" we ask that they include their K 1.6 configuration report to assist us with the diagnosis of the defect. If, in our opinion, the request does not fall into the category of a defect report then the moderators are likely to move it to a different category.

I think this is what has happened in your case.

Support questions usually take a lot of time. I usually spend about 6 hours per day sifting through the requests asked at this forum. We, who provide you with support, do so voluntarily - there is no payment given to us for the time we devote to this task. Even a simple question takes 5 minutes to answer. Some of the more complicated ones can take an hour or two. The only likely reward that we may get is the occasional "thank you" - sometimes people even use the thank you button - or a favourable write-up at the Joomla Extensions Directory. Most of the time, users do not even acknowledge the help they receive.

I doubt if many people will read what I have just written but I hope you might better understand about the community that is here to help one another.

That's a really long answer...thanks....although a lot of it wasn't relevant. My post wasn't moved. It appeared in a different section the moment I posted. I think it has to do with the "New topic" button. It (the drop down category selector) doesn't default to the category (if that is the correct term) you are in. It appears to have defaulted to "Common questions" even though I wasn't in that area at the time.

Secondly I understand the trash feature...I just don't want it. Regardless of whether it was written about 8 months ago, I'd like to be able to deactivate it.

Don't get me wrong...fantastic feature....just have absolutely no need for it and hope an option to switch it off comes in a future iteration of Kunena.

Cheers,

Phil

FYI - You can run the trash feature but not show it in the frontend to moderators. Then once in a while you just got to the backend and click the empty trash button.

For now we haven't planned a setting to disable it altogether - we are trying to be careful not to add one hundreds of 1 off options to the settings - as it quickly makes the settings grow out of control.

fxstein wrote: FYI - You can run the trash feature but not show it in the frontend to moderators. Then once in a while you just got to the backend and click the empty trash button.

In other words, for those that don't need the feature...you now have more steps to work through.

Really hope you reconsider not having a disable option.

Cheers,

Phil

Again, I would like to help explain unusualness of why your message appeared in a different category to where you thought you had posted it.

When you click the new topic menu item, the default category is the first one that your user profile allows you to use: for ordinary users of K.com, this would be the "Official Announcements and News about Kunena" - which no-one can post to because it's a locked category! So, you would have to change it to something else.

I'm disappointed that you felt my reply was non-responsive to your question but, after all, you raised the subject in the first place. I think you implied the question when you wrote "no idea how this ended up in the common questions section." I was trying to offer one explanation. In any event, this topic has been categorised correctly: it's a question; it doesn't really fall into the area of product support per se.

I agree with fxstein (and others) who have written many times about why it's probably not such a good idea to extend the number of user-configurable settings. Quite apart from the work involved in creating the feature, modifying the database to store these configuration settings and the program logic that's needed to process the request for every page where the feature is invoked, there is also the added burden in documenting the features, assisting users when there are problems with them, etc., etc. As fxstein wrote, most of the time these kinds of requests are "one-off". Most users want less configuration complexity, not more.

It's a difficult balancing act: flexibility over what you can control vs. software performance. In all cases there is a trade-off that has to be made. Sometimes the inconvenience does not fully justify the cost: as fxstein wrote, you can hide trashed messages from the view of your moderator team. Site administrators will always see trashed messages. If you find that seeing a trashed message is an inconvenience to you, as a site administrator, consider creating a lesser-privileged moderator account for your daily activities on the forum.

As a moderator of this forum, I see trashed messages. This has never been a problem for me and, I'm reasonably confident that I speak on behalf of the entire moderation team in this regard, this is not an issue for others at this site, either.

You really are spending a lot of time on detailed answers to a simple comment, although it is appreciated.

Let me put it another way...you are both talking about removing complexity, yet the process of deleting posts and threads is now far more complex and involves more actions. Why not have ann option that keeps things simple for those that want it?

Phil

I don't think one extra step adds an unworkable level of complexity but I understand the difficulty that you are having. I hope that our suggestions, however, will alleviate some of the "nuisance value" that seem to be experiencing. By the same token, we've also received many requests in the past where other users have asked for a way to restore messages that were inadvertently deleted and they needed a way to restore those things. As we've said, there are ways that you can deal with this issue but, unless others consider this to be an important requirement, your question appears to be a one-off request; K 1.6 was designed the way it was - users can change those things (or not use K 1.6) if those features do not meet their individual needs. Everyone's needs are different; the project is trying to satisfy the needs of the majority of users. I hope you understand our concerns, too, in terms of balancing configurable flexibility vs. overall performance.

You say this is a need. I would like to humbly suggest that your request is more of a want or a "desirable" feature request. That may not seem terribly sympathetic but there are ways to work around the issue as we have already discussed. We will certainly take your concerns on-board in the future development of Kunena but, for the time being, there are no specific plans to change the current approach.