XF 2.2 Thread type tools

Understandably, many of you are chomping at the bit to start utilising our new forum and thread types. But in a lot of cases if you don't want or need to convert entire forums to a specific type (which would convert the threads within to the associated type) your existing threads will remain as standard discussions.

There are a few use cases to be considered and we have addressed these in XF 2.2 Beta 2.

Converting a single thread to a specific type​

Moderators who have the "Manage any thread" permission will now be able to access the "Change thread type" option in the "More options" menu when viewing a thread.

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If a specific type requires additional configuration then that is displayed after clicking "Continue..." and a confirmation is displayed before the changes are made.

Converting multiple threads to a specific type​

It is only reasonable to also allow this action to be performed on multiple threads at a time so we have also added an inline moderation handler to take care of this. Just select one or more threads using inline moderation and with a few clicks you can change all of those threads to the same type.

There is a small exception here in that it will generally not be possible to change the type of multiple threads at a time if the target thread type, e.g. "Poll" requires additional input.

Converting threads to a specific type based on criteria in bulk​

We suspect this is the option that most people will be interested in as this will allow you to convert threads based on criteria.

One such use case which was suggested a few times is converting existing threads to a specific type based on its current thread prefix. With the existing power of "Batch update threads" and the new "Change thread type" action this is now trivial.

 

[Bob]

The screen shots do not include the Thread Type "Resource". How is a thread that is the type "Resource" being handled? Is there anything to prevent a specific thread types from being converted (so as to prevent disconnect from associated content)?

 

[Mike]

There are methods that can limit what thread types you can convert to or from (beyond the limits of what's allowed in a given forum).

In this case, resource threads are indeed limited in this system, but they were also convertable before this system. You choose the thread a resource relates to in the resource itself. We don't expose the inverse so it's not available as a conversion target (plus for bulk conversions, it'd have required input and thus wouldn't be appropriate).

 

[beerForo]

Are their warnings for not being able to change back?

 

[doublespaces]

This is very useful flexibility. I needed this, thank you.

 

[JoyFreak]

Amazing!

 

[Chris D]

Are their warnings for not being able to change back?

There's nothing to stop you from changing from a question, to a suggestion and then back to a question.

But data loss can occur from the perspective of votes and solutions hence why there is a warning in various places. You can see this in the screenshot in the article.

 

[Sportsoutlaw]

Thanks for this addition, very useful.

 

[BassMan]

Excellent addition!

Thank you.

 

[smozgur]

Congratulation on the upgrade! Everything looks fantastic, and it is great work.

I have a question about existing Likes and the new Voting system.

I've been struggling to decide how to proceed, then I found the following post that @Chris D sent.

As designed - Upvoting made number go down

I went to an old thread: Scheduled Thread / Post Below the up arrow it said 117, I pressed the up arrow and the number changed to 116. I think this has to do with that I already had liked the thread way back. But I think this is a bug.

xenforo.com

We converted likes to upvotes.

Converting existing Likes to Votes when we convert an existing Discussion forum to a Question forum. It is the exact same idea I was trying to decide, now I feel better about it. I can see that it is doable by altering data in the database - creating xf_content_vote records by using a SQL query and rebuilding post cache.

However, I would like to make sure if XenForo team already thought about this and provided a tool for the conversion - even as a one time conversion. Reactions should stay where they are, but we can't have our members to revisit posts to vote them, so we'd like to mark liked posts to be as voted. I can see actionSuggestionConvertReactions action function in the Forum controller (I don't have a suggestion type forum, so I didn't see how it works in the Admin panel), however there is no similar action for Question forums.

Or, it's been there since the beginning but I missed it somehow? Could you please help me to find if I really missed it?

Thank you again for all great new features!