Lack of interest Allow us to change custom thread field choice IDs without affecting threads

[sbj]

This bothers me a lot.
I have thousands of threads which have choices applied to.

And in ACP, if I accidently change one single character in the ID, it deletes every record of it. It means I lose potentially hundreds of threads and have to spend a lot of time to undo it. I also don't think that they are logged in the logs. So, please consider to make ID changes more suitable.

At least give us a warning message when we want to change an ID.

 

[TickTackk]

At least give us a warning message when we want to change an ID.

The value represents the internal value for the choice. The text field is shown when the field is displayed. You should not change the value field if any users have selected that choice; if you do, users will lose their selection.

 

[sbj]

View attachment 221024

Thx, I am absolutely aware of that. But that exactly bothers me. I don't think a text warning is enough in this case. Many people will not read it or forget about it, accidents can happen.

a) Not everyone knows the XF software like I do which means my co-admins can change that without knowing what mess they have done.
b) Everyone can accidently do a mistake, which causes a mess.
c) If I want to change typos and such, I cannot do so. Once set, it stays forever like that. But those are actually very crucial, because those are used for link building. And if I have a typo, it potentially affects SEO (which I don't care) but as a grammar nazi, I want it to be correct at least. Even if it is the id.

You cannot imagine what havoc it can do to my forum. I have 7500+ choices, 50+ fields, 50000+ threads with those fields and choices.

I can't even say that admin b should only be able to edit custom thread field 1, admin c field 2 and 3 and so on.
It is either nobody has access to it, or the admins have access to all fields. And it can break so much. Imagine one admin being a d*ck, he can cause Hiroshima on my forum with just one single admin permission.

But, all in all, I am constantly adding new choices to the system. Every time I add a new entry, I am extra careful and am frightened I can accidently hit "save" without noticing I changed an ID accidently....

 

[TickTackk]

Thx, I am absolutely aware of that. But that exactly bothers me.

a) Not everyone knows the XF software like I do which means my co-admins can change that without knowing what mess they have done.
b) Everyone can accidently do a mistake, which causes a mess.
c) If I want to change typos and such, I cannot do so. Once set, it stays forever like that. But those are actually very crucial, because those are used for link building. And if I have a typo, it potentially affects SEO (which I don't care) but as a grammar nazi, I want it to be correct at least. Even if it is a the id.

You cannot imagine what havoc it can do to my forum. I have 7500+ choices, 50+ fields, 50000+ threads with those fields and choices.

I'm not saying you're wrong. My post just shows that there is a warning right blow choice fields.

Imagine one admin being a d*ck,

In that case it's really the super administrator's fault for giving someone like that rights do major changes likes that.

 

[sbj]

I'm not saying you're wrong. My post just shows that there is a warning right blow choice fields.

I apologize, I misunderstood your reply.

To be clear, I didn't mean a text warning under the choices.

I meant a warning system like the mark forums read popup. That one actually makes sure one didn't hit something accidentally. So I was asking for such thing, not a text warning some people may not see.

In that case it's really the super administrator's fault for giving someone like that rights do major changes likes that.

It is one single admin permission. Should that be able to cause such a mess? Correct me if I am wrong, it is not even logged which threads are losing their data.
But that is besides my point. Imagine every admin is perfect. One can accidently cause a lot of problems. I often catch myself trying to correct some IDs which I find not correct anymore because the phrase changed completely yet the id stays forever.

Just some minutes ago, a person with a lot of knowledge (a university prof) told me in private something.
A name we have in our system (as in custom thread field choices) is actually written wrong.

Like instead of being written as "Karl", we have it as "Carl".
Of course I told him I will change it. The choice itself will be changed but I cannot change the ID and it will be displayed as wrong.
This particular choice is used in 53 threads (I checked).

Imagine me changing the ID, what it can cause. So my options are either to ignore the ID being written wrong or I can go and create a new choice and add it to 53 threads, but before I must save 53 urls in my notepad, so I don't forget one. And since there is also no bulk update for custom thread fields... yeah...