[RFC] Require Subject on *all* posts

[jsebean]

There is another situation in which post subjects come in handy: merging topics. Without post subjects it would be impossible to tell which post came from which topic.

Good point then I would say then, don't remove it.

As far as requiring post subjects, I am not sold on this yet. Currently post subjects are pre-filled with "Re: topic title", therefore it takes effort on the poster's part to remove the post subject. Why would someone go through this effort?

It may happen by accident, and the reason for requiring it for a post is so it makes life easier to implement this rfc. Otherwise if there was a case which there was no post subject for whatever reason, then on the forum list it would look ugly as you'd have an empty blank space. So....

My preference would be for

if (strlen(post_subject) is 0) then
let post_subject = "Re: " + topic_title

That's the solution I personally feel we should go with as well then.

[naderman]

An important aspect is that pretty much all posts imported from phpBB2 boards currently have no subject. So a major point would simply be to deal with those. I think we should simply enforce the subject to be the default if it is left empty. As you said there is no good reason to intentionally empty it.

Regarding what Igor proposed you can see this for example under this post on phpbb.de: https://www.phpbb.de/community/viewtopi ... 1#p1269101 In that case the topic was moved to another forum. Essentially they display topic log info inline with posts. So that you are made aware that a topic was moved/merged/retitled etc. I would really love to see an RFC for this feature as I think it is extremely useful to understand what moderation activities took place over the course of a discussion.

[Jocelyn79]

In reply to the first post in this discussion:
1. I disagree, when I see a post without a subject, it's not a problem since the subject is already in the title bar of my browser, and displayed on the top of the page.
Displaying so many times the subject is a waste of space on the screen.
2. The subject of a post can easily be retrieved with a multi-table query like:
SELECT t.topic_title FROM posts p, topics t WHERE p.post_id=12 AND p.topic_id=t.topic_id

I switched from IPB to Phpbb a few years ago, and I still don't see the usefullness of having a subject for each post.
All posts with the same topic_id belong to the same topic, and all posts talk about the same subject.

Someone wrote something about merging topics. You usually decide to merge 2 topics because their respective posts are about the same subject.

So why bother with having a subject for each post?

[jsebean]

Really it doesn't matter to me either way. I would not oppose removing it all together and just have the topic Subject shown at the top of the page and each post is simply a post. However, Oleg made a good point in regards to merging topics, but in the link naderman posted, I like that idea better and if was included by default that gives one less reason for having post subjects.

So I'm on the fence with this one, doesn't really matter, I wouldn't be against removing it all together. However, if it's not removed, then a subject should be required or, if the post subject is left empty then it should add Re to the Topic subject. This way you would have a more "fluid" (is that the word I want) layout, unlike now, posts without a subject simply look "out of line" since basically every other post has a subject.

[DavidIQ]

I say it's not needed. Very rarely do I find myself having to change the subject when replying with or without quick reply. If I had another subject I'd just start another topic.

[Oleg]

I would be ok with requiring subject on all posts and defaulting it to Re: topic subject, possibly silently (if the user submits with an empty subject, default the subject and take the post).

[jsebean]

I would be ok with requiring subject on all posts and defaulting it to Re: topic subject, possibly silently (if the user submits with an empty subject, default the subject and take the post).

That'd be what I'd go with if subject on posts wasn't removed.

[A_Jelly_Doughnut]

I would be ok with requiring subject on all posts and defaulting it to Re: topic subject, possibly silently (if the user submits with an empty subject, default the subject and take the post).

+1 for silent.

[imkingdavid]

I would be ok with requiring subject on all posts and defaulting it to Re: topic subject, possibly silently (if the user submits with an empty subject, default the subject and take the post).

+1 for silent.

+1 as well.

[Oleg]

Was this done?