Changing the title of a post after moving it

[Ken Winter]

I started with a post that is a reply to a topic whose title (Subject) is, let's say, "Hello World".  

I want to move this post to being a new topic under the forum root, with its own new title.  

I have done the move OK.  But the title of the moved post is now "Re: Hello World", and I can't find a way to change it.  That is, I can't find any option to change the title under the "options" menu, or anywhere else.

I assume that this is because the item that I have moved was not originally posted by me.

Is there any way to accomplish this move-and-retitle operation?

~ TIA for your help
~ Ken

[GregChapman]

You need to add the User Permission "Edit_all" to the forum/sub-forum in question.

This allows you to edit both the subject line and body of any post. It is available only to those in the Administrator group. (It's close to the bottom of the Change Permissions screen.)

Obviously it needs to be used prudently as many users would get upset at having their words changed.

(I use it a lot in a forum where many users top post via email leaving extensive quotes of previous messages underneath their words.)

[Ken Winter]

Thanks, Greg - that worked.

I have noticed one more quirk that I wonder about.  See the numbered screen shots I have posted at https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-thboqjuKZTV29MZXFscjBoWmc/edit?usp=sharing:

1. What I moved and made its own topic is the whole tree of messages that you see here.  Then I retitled the topic (the one dated July 10) - it was originally titled "Re: Introduction: What's a Community Portal?"; its new title is "Mosaic: a Cohousing Portal Web Application".  Then I noticed that the reply messages still had the old title, which is confusing in this new context.  So I set about manually changing their titles to the new title.  
2. Here I am editing Meredith's post (the one labeled July 12 on screen 1).  I enter the new title, and hit 'post message'.
3. And I see that Meredith's message now has no title at all.

This outcome is OK with me, but I'm a bit perplexed about how Nabble handles titles on replies.  Having a reply title come up blank when I have tried to change it doesn't seem like good behavior.

I'm gonna try changing the title on this reply to see what happens.

[Ken Winter]

Another weirdness:   I edited a reply  that had a title under the above-mentioned topic, intending to remove the title.  I did this by simply deleting the text from Subject field, and then hitting 'post message' - and I got an error saying "The title is required."  

So: If I enter a title, Nabble blanks it out; if I don't enter a title, Nabble won't let me save the change at all...

[GregChapman]

I confirm your results.

You appear to have discovered a bug that affects "Threaded" and "List" view - and perhaps "Classic" view because there, as you point out, there the original subject remains in place.

My thought is that it is legitimate for replies not to have their subject altered automatically when the edit is being made by the original author - because any author always has the opportunity to place his own subject in a reply, and it ought to be for him to make any change to his post.

However, I agree with you that where the edit is being made under the "Edit_all" permission then it is appropriate that all replies - where the default subject line has been used - should follow through with the changed subject line.

Over to Pedro to take a decision on how things should operate and correct the current bug.

[Pedro]

Hi, I've made a simple test in my forum:
1 - Created a post titled Topic1
2 - Answered, and it got titled as Re: Topic1
3 - Moved Re: Topic1 to the root and renamed to Topic2
4 - Answered Topic2 and got "Re: Topic2"

It seems to be ok.

Am I doing anything wrong?

[Ken Winter]

Hi Pedro ~

What you did isn't what I did that led to this issue.  To reproduce my problem, your scenario would go something like this:

1 - Created a post titled "Topic1" (Call this message M1)
2 - Get some other user to answer, and it got titled as "Re: Topic1".  (Let's label this message as M2)
3 - Get some other user to reply to message M2 (call this message M3).  It too will be titled "Re: Topic1".
3 - Move R1 to the root, and relabel it as Topic2.  The child message M3 of course will come along with it, and will continue to be titled "Re: Topic1".  I would prefer that when a message is moved and re-titled, all the replies in its subtree that have the default title  (a title on the pattern "Re: <topic title>") get re-titled accordingly.
4 - Since Nabble doesn't do that, I tried to manually re-title M3 in its new location, and that's when the weird behavior began:
  a - If you try to re-title M3 as "Re: Topic 2", Nabble blanks out the title.
  b - If you try to blank out the title, Nabble gives you an error like "Title is required".
  c - If you give M3 any title other than "Re: Topic 2", it saves the title you entered.  (I'm not sure I got around to reporting this observation in this discussion.)

So, two things are different between your scenario and this one:  First, the replies were from somebody other than you (the administrator); I think this matters because things may be different when you're editing somebody else's post.  Second, the message that was hard to re-title (M3) was a reply to message M2 posted *before* M2 was moved, made into its own topic, and re-titled.  I assume that a reply posted to M2 *after* it was moved would be correctly titled "Re: Topic2", as in the 4th step of your scenario.

By the way, for what it's worth, I agree with Greg's suggestions for how things should work.

[GregChapman]

I think I see part of the issue, but I'm not sure that I fully understand what is going on.

Take a look at the topic:
http://gregtest.991552.n3.nabble.com/My-First-Post-with-Images-tp2585508.html
In that I have made a subject line change but not the move that is part of Ken's observation.

• In Classic view every post shows with a subject line.

• In List view the most recent posts show without a subject

• In threaded view the most recent replies show without a subject. These are responses to the post made 21 Dec 2012

If this is a device intended to show the maximum quote of the reply posts I could understand the thinking behind it. However, that does not explain why the post on 2 May 2011 shows with a subject.

I am also slightly confused by the order of the replies. I would have expected the May 2011 post to show under the original post followed by the Dec 2012 post. In Threaded view I guess the Dec 2012 post gets a higher ranking as it has the most recent replies? Is it also possible something has changed in Nabble's code since Dec 2012 that affects the display of subject lines?

[Pedro]

I'm still trying to reproduce this error. Greg, can you reproduce it from a new post?

[Pedro]

As I could see:
List view shows posts starting with the oldest one, and the others follow as a list.
Threaded view shows the most recent post in all levels.

In order to fix the subject, you should rename the subject to "Re: [Title of the parent node]".
The parent node doesn't need to be the first message, but any reply.
Let me know if you don't understand.

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

Pedro <Nabble> wrote

As I could see:
List view shows posts starting with the oldest one, and the others follow as a list.
Threaded view shows the most recent post in all levels.

See:
http://gregtest.991552.n3.nabble.com/Topic-To-Test-Subject-Line-Disappearance-tp4012733.html

This seems to confirm your observation with regards to the order of posts for both LIST and THREADED views.

However, with regard to subject lines, it only shows  the first post to have a changed subject, so in LIST it is impossible to see which post relates to which subject - even if the posts are expanded (as there is no "in reply to" line added, as there is in Classic view).

In THREADED view it is possible but still difficult - by very careful study of the indentation level.

In order to fix the subject, you should rename the subject to "Re: [Title of the parent node]".
The parent node doesn't need to be the first message, but any reply.
Let me know if you don't understand.

Either I do not understand your suggestion to force subject line to appear or it doesn't seem to work! See the text of all the messages at:
http://gregtest.991552.n3.nabble.com/Second-Topic-To-Test-Subject-Line-Disappearance-tp4012740.html
I cannot get an existing subject line to repeat on every post in LIST or THREADED. For a subject line to appear it seems to require a clear change of text and that defeats the objective, which I understood to be to show which messages relate to which subject.