Fixed Unable to approve posts from moderation dropdown

[Mr Lucky]

If I have a post awaiting approval and then tick the select for moderation box choose approve and then click on go, nothing happens.

But if I click on the Approve button above the post it works fine.

NB: it works fine to approve from the moderation queue at the top, or to select for moderation in the thread list and then approve.

Does anyone know why this should not be working from the dropdown under the post, but does work everywhere else.

 

[Chris D]

There's a distinction between a thread which requires approval and an individual post which requires approval.

It sounds like you're dealing with an unapproved thread, here, rather than a post. With that in mind, the checkbox in the bottom left corner of the post will not work to approve it, because that tries to approve the post, but it's actually the entire thread which requires approval.

 

[Mr Lucky]

OK, that kind of makes sense, but still confusing because I did some further testing:

I can unapprove a post (first post in in thread) using the dropdown under the post, but cannot re-approve it with the dropdown.

 

[Chris D]

Yeah, I think that's because we have code in place to ensure a first post cannot be unapproved and instead that unapproves the entire thread.

That would be doubly confusing, in some ways.

Essentially, if the first post of a thread is unapproved then actually it's the entire thread that's unapproved in all cases and therefore approval actions will be taken against the thread only, and not the post.

I'm actually going to move this to bug reports because it's fairly unintuitive in its current form (pretty sure it's always been like that, though, FWIW).

 

[Mr Lucky]

Yes, I get the reason totally. It may just be the language in the dropdown which confused me because it says approve post not approve thread.

It's a tricky one because obviously if a first post in a thread is unapproved, then users cannot reply - it would make no sense to have a first post unapproved but a second post approved.

 

[Chris D]

I think the simplest solution is, just like when a first post is unapproved it actually unapproves the thread, then if we try to approve a first post, if it's actually the thread that is unapproved then we approve the thread.

 

[Mr Lucky]

So the solution would be to have Approve thread or unnaprove thread in the dropdown, although if I'm the only person who's ever queried this I don't see it as a big issue, no need to spend effort just for me and my strange brain!

 

[Chris D]

I don't think we'd change the label in the post dropdown, but we would just change its behaviour so it actually does what you think it should.

 

[Chris D]

Sorted now, thanks. Approving the first post in a thread will now approve the entire thread.