How to delete a discussion and the response?

04SA

How to delete a discussion and the response?

Julia Szent-Györgyi

Short answer: you can't.

You can delete your own comments, but not your discussions, and you cannot do anything to other people's comments/responses.

You can edit your discussions, essentially making them blank, but I don't recommend this, as it'll be confusing and thus will engender further commentary, which I presume is what you're trying to avoid in the first place.

Question for a moderator: are mods able to delete threads? I know they can edit them and close them.

Graham Buckell

@Julia Szent-Györgyi

Yes, moderators can delete discussions.

Monica Thomas3

Having read your help file before I contacted you here, it said I could delete the discussion I started by ticking the edit on RHS etc. Only problem was there was nothing to tick.

The discussion was concerning my grandmother Sarah Fitchett which I have since found was incorrect. There was no other comment on my discussion board.

Monica Thomas3

Sorry, I should have included this in above comment.

"You can delete a discussion that you started:

1. Click the Edit icon 

 next to the discussion you want to delete.

1. Click Delete Discussion.
2. Enter a reason statement, and click Delete."

Maile L

Flag the post you would like to have deleted and ask the moderator to delete it.

Paul W

@MaileLoveland

There is a good and bad side of a moderator being able to address such a request - especially in relation to the original post. On the one hand, the poster might later feel embarrassed about raising the issue, or the manner in which they raised it. But, on the other, another Community member might have spent a good deal of time addressing a question, providing a response that might prove to be useful to the whole community.

On the former "GetSat" forum, one could not even edit a post once there had been a response from someone else, as (I imagine) it was thought the response would make no sense if the original / earlier post was then substantially changed.

I suppose having a four hour slot in order that the poster (original or otherwise) can edit / delete their comments seems to be a more balanced option, compared to how things were in the past.

Julia Szent-Györgyi

@Monica Thomas3, I have just spent a (frustrating) half an hour fruitlessly trying to get the site to cough up the help file that you found. Wherever it is, it's outdated: FS disabled thread deletion by regular users well over a year ago now, and we're coming up on a year since they instated the four-hour time limit on editing.

If you could tell us where or how you found the article, we could ask for it to be corrected to reflect current settings.

Amy Archibald

@Monica Thomas3 @Julia Szent-Györgyi

Monica, the Help Center article that you snipped a section from is about the Collaboration feature called Discussion in the Family Tree. See this Help Center article:

https://www.familysearch.org/en/help/helpcenter/article/what-is-the-discussions-feature-in-family-tree

It is not about the discussion threads here in the FamilySearch Community.

Maile L

@Paul W I understand your concern. Discussions are not deleted just because someone asked for it to be done. Typically, I have been asked to remove posts that are duplicates.