notification of removed topics

[RFD]

anyone else with an insight or suggestion for fixing this problem?

make no mistake, this IS a forum problem.  pruning any or many selective threads that are many years old will generate a massive amount of notification emails to users who are baffled as to why, many years later, they're notified of a thread removal.  this can also stir up some user controversy as to why their "most important" threads/posts are being removed from the forum.  in the best of all worlds, an admin control panel switch to turn off/on topic removals would be most appropriate.   

[Illori]

are you using a language other then "English"?

if you are using for example British English or English-utf-8 then you need to modify those language files as well.

[RFD]

are you using a language other then "English"?

if you are using for example British English or English-utf-8 then you need to modify those language files as well.

english only.

English    ISO-8859-1    40598    en_US

[RFD]

i've been tediously using FAR (a find and replace sh app) to search through source and theme files to try to hunt down what's triggering that "remove topic" notifier, but so far no luck.  this is getting exasperating.

[Sir Osis of Liver]

Have you tried setting up a test install with clean files, connect to your production database, see if problem persists?  Will be on a while tonight, pm me if you don't get it.

[Illori]

if you set all groups temporarily to not be able to see that board, then you can delete/modify/change any/all topics without any notifications being sent out as only those can view the topic get notifications.

when done set the board back to visible.

[RFD]

if you set all groups temporarily to not be able to see that board, then you can delete/modify/change any/all topics without any notifications being sent out as only those can view the topic get notifications.

when done set the board back to visible.

turning off a board just isn't feasible for the most part.

[shawnb61]

Do you have a test copy of your forum? 

I believe the field in question is notify_types on the members table.  The default is actually hard-coded on the db itself on the members table to '2'.  '1' is replies & moderation, '2' is replies & moderation for your topics, '3' is replies only & '4' is nothing.  These 4 values correspond to the values in the dropdown available to the users under Profile | Modify Profile | Notifications. 

I have not done this myself, as we don't do a lot of such maintenance.  You are on your own here.  If I absolutely had to, I would change the DB default to 3.  After testing & confirming the desired behavior, I would consider changing all '2's to '3's on the members table.  This, of course, assumes nobody really wants a '2' & nobody has deliberately set it to a '2'. 

So proceed with caution, do a couple backups, & test... test... test...   

[RFD]

Do you have a test copy of your forum? 

I believe the field in question is notify_types on the members table.  The default is actually hard-coded on the db itself on the members table to '2'.  '1' is replies & moderation, '2' is replies & moderation for your topics, '3' is replies only & '4' is nothing.  These 4 values correspond to the values in the dropdown available to the users under Profile | Modify Profile | Notifications. 

I have not done this myself, as we don't do a lot of such maintenance.  You are on your own here.  If I absolutely had to, I would change the DB default to 3.  After testing & confirming the desired behavior, I would consider changing all '2's to '3's on the members table.  This, of course, assumes nobody really wants a '2' & nobody has deliberately set it to a '2'. 

So proceed with caution, do a couple backups, & test... test... test...

i appreciate your input and comment.  however, this would be an untried, untested, extrinsic work-around for something that should be intrinsically available and vetted for all versions of SMF.  i have no smarts to attempt what you propose.  but more importantly, it is not the kind of global change i'd want to make for all my users.

what's needed at the very least is a quick and temporary way to turn off post notifications, remove the thread, turn back post notifications.  not a pretty way to do the job, but it sure would beat removing hundreds of ancient threads where all those thread posters will get email notifications.   

it appears none of the SMF dev gurus can fix what's clearly broke.  no one can add a switch that dumb admins like me can tick off to fix this glaring SMF problem without having to resort to becoming an SMF dev?