To deal with the topics that someone starts and then deletes the first post before a response, I just marked one ‘unlisted’. Seems like a good thing to do with them so they stop showing up.
Second thought. I just deleted it. 
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The Level 4s can unlist them for you, then you may delete them at your leisure. 
OK. Point is really we should clean these up. It seems we are too slow to move off of the default view of allowing content. But, in this case, there is no content, just clutter.
Couldn’t you get @ChrisGammell to shorten the timeout to say 1 hour? The point of automation is to take, not make work for people.
Not sure if any of us knew that was even possible. Interface has lots of choice.
I am not sure even any kind of action is needed. I also saw the deleted topic (including a mark to see the diff for the edit, and thus what the post was about. I assumed that only level 4’s and higher could see the deleted post, and for others it would be invisible automatically.
You could check this by creating a new user account with a different name.
Probably the reason these deleted topics stay on the forum, in view, is because those with the ability to hide these non-threads are reluctant to do so without instruction.
The easiest way to solve the problem is for the Mods (that means you @hermit, as longest standing/sitting Mod ) to “Issue a Decree”, rather than hint at a suggestion, to those with the ability to Unlist a deleted First Post topic. It is then no longer in view or causing clutter.
Mods can then exterminate at their leisure.
The list of Janitorial tasks would now include:
- Spam gets flagged.
- Abusive, attack posts get flagged.
- General electronic questions with no relation to Kicad are politely closed.
- Obvious advertising or totally unsuitable links in threads are edited out of posts.
- Edit and retag mistagged topics.
- First post deleted topics are unlisted.
Any more tasks?
You forgot:
Retag mistagged topics
Remove greengrocer apostrophe’s in titles
Nah, computer should do your obsessive work.
I’d let it, if it had even the slightest modicum of intelligence.
But you have the power to edit.
Silly me; I should have asked you to edit the list. It would save wear on my knuckles fingertips 
It’s smart enough to get you to do its work.
Nah I’m not doing your work for you either. 
Seeing poor Hermit’s thread has been trashed by a certain Feline creature; I feel I should explain the “greengrocer’s apostrophe” reference, especially for the English second language members.
A short book titled: “Eats shoots and leaves” by Lynn Truss, was written some years ago. This book discusses, in a humorous manner, the demise of correct punctuation in English language usage. Greengrocer’s apostrophe appears in this book.
For those interested, a CD audio book was also produced by the author. This audio book is available to hear on Youtube.
No grammar wars here please.
I have to work in Malaysian English, which is a rapidly moving target as it gets pulled by US spelling, mainly due to MS Office defaults.
@davidsrsb predates my mod appointment. But the reason I do as I do is that I feel compelled to exploit the collective intelligence here. Like Malaysian English, it can be a changing entity.
So I created a topic, waited 5 minutes, added something, then deleted it.
It’s gone and not visible to logged in users as well as guests. But this is inconclusive. I think because I’m L4, it allows me to delete it immediately without any grace period for a mod to take a look.
Somebody who is just a normal user should retry this experiment, simulating a user who has changed their mind about a post before any replies have accumulated. It’s possible it’s not listed for normal users once it’s been deleted.
And I still think it’s obsessive to worry about non-content when there are topics with content to screen. I’ll let others obsess over this. As I said you should look into the possibility of shortening the grace period.
I am not too bothered by these abandoned posts.
Tonight I have busy deleting a lot of QuickBooks spam
@ChrisGammell I’m not sure if Captcha is an option to slow these guys down. But
@der.ule is a little closer to his time zone. I’m not sure about our two ‘down under’ mates. They would be a good fit time zone wise too. In the US I wake up to a back load of posts but it dwindles through out the day, so maybe US posting is lighter.
I think India may be the source of what @davidsrsb is seeing, but that is going from my past experience, not his. The internal tool doesn’t work well for IP addresses but I do a whois.
I am, but I really see very little spam, once this month, I think, those guys in the future do a great job! Thanks!
Last night’s 3 spams was the first I’ve flagged in a long time. I think @davidsrsb catches most of them.
Thanks, but categorically omit me from any expansion plans. I’m happy to tidy a bit here and there if I happen to be online, but that’s all. jmk seems a keen and ambitious list writer so maybe he should be promoted.
I think if the flag button wasn’t so well hidden under a slide-out, more readers would be happy and can be trusted to stomp on spam. They should also be trusted to stomp on the second and subsequent posts, I think currently only the first post can be flagged by ordinary members.
So ML9104’s aborted attempt at creating a FAQ topic on KiCad 7 Creating Multi-Unit Symbols has provided a test case. I went into another browser and opened the forum as a guest, and the topic was visible. So that answers one question about the workings of Discourse.
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