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Comment threads remain active even if all comments are deleted
In this answer there's a "General comments" thread, but all the comments are deleted.
This is related to - but IMO not the same as - this other post, in which it's discussed if showing that some comments are deleted is useful or not. That discussion is focused on the case where there are still some comments in the thread, but in this specific case, all the comments are gone, and I'm really not sure if the thread should remain active.
Maybe if someone wants to add a comment related to the same subject (considering that the thread has a meaningful title), keeping the thread active would make sense.
On the other hand, why not remove the thread in this case? If someone wants to add anything, just create another thread. Not sure if keeping the thread active will bring any benefits.
I've just found another case. Didn't search for more, though.
As a side note, I've added a comment to that thread and it worked (I've deleted it, as it was only a test).
But now, in the answer it says that there are 3 comments:
And in the thread page, it says there are 4:
1 answer
This bug appears to be fixed, but it is not. The following works for me, but the original poster of the answer can still see the deleted thread.
How it seems to someone who didn't post the original question/answer
Note that newer threads disappear from view (at least for non-moderators) when the last comment is deleted.
As a test, I added a comment in the "General comments" section on the example answer mentioned. Deleting it resulted in the comment thread disappearing (after a page reload, as expected for comment threads, to avoid confusing the user).
So it appears this bug is fixed and any old empty threads can be removed by adding a comment and then deleting it. However, this only solves the problem for people other than the poster of the post (question/answer), who can still see the deleted thread.
How it seems to the poster of the original question/answer
As a test, I added a comment thread below one of my own questions. I then deleted the comments, leaving an empty thread. I refreshed the page and the empty thread disappeared as expected.
However, I now have a "Show more" button below my post that is not visible to anyone else:
Clicking on "Show more" reveals the empty comment thread that is hidden from everyone else:
Clicking on the empty thread title expands the thread to show that I cannot see the deleted comment inside it:
Clicking on "See the whole thread" opens the empty thread in a new page:
This informs me that I cannot add any more comments.
There seems to be no purpose to allowing me to see this empty thread that I cannot read the deleted comments of and cannot add new comments to, so this seems to be a bug.
I've raised an issue on GitHub.
1 comment thread
1 comment thread