XF 2.3 How are quotes linking to deleted (from being or merged) posts handled?

[Stuart Wright]

I found this post from a while back asking about the same issue.

XF 1.5 Thread 'Merge posts and threads - quoted content links to 404'

Oct 12, 2015

Scenario:
1. I have post #1 and post #3, with post #5 quoting post #3
2. I merge post #1 and #3 together, with post #1 being the target/remaining post.

Post #5's quoted content still links to post #3, which when clicked gives you a 404 page not found.

I would think that during the merge posts process, the system should support hyperlinks to the 'disappearing' post, so that it still works instead of giving a 404 page.

A possible solution being:
i) during the merge process, keep the record in xf_post for post_id #3
ii) set message_state to 'merged' for post_id #3
iii) add a column in...

• Mouth
• Replies: 0
• Forum: Troubleshooting and problems

I have users and moderators complaining that when posts and/or threads are merged, all those other posts quoting the, now deleted, posts contain broken links.
They are asking why links in quoted posts can't be updated to the newly merged posts.
This is something that @Kier will have likely made an executive decision on for understandable reasons:
During a post/thread merge (or delete) process, doing a search and replace on all the posts in the database to update links to the deleted post(s) would be tremendously database intensive.
Has this process been considered and rejected even when using Enhanced Search?