[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #63931: Deleting a parent comment causes the child to move up a level

[WordPress Trac]

#63931: Deleting a parent comment causes the child to move up a level
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 Reporter:  oglekler                   |       Owner:  (none)
     Type:  enhancement                |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal                     |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Comments                   |     Version:
 Severity:  normal                     |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  has-test-info 2nd-opinion  |     Focuses:
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Comment (by SirLouen):

 Replying to [comment:9 peterwilsoncc]:
 > I don't think WordPress can delete/trash the entire comment tree because
 that is very unlikely to meet the user's intent when removing a single
 comment. A plugin may wish to do so using the existing `trash_comment` or
 `delete_comment` actions.

 I don't really know each single expected behavior in WP, but its funny
 because I always thought it worked this way. The reality is that generally
 I lock comments (And I was thinking on integrating bbPress with comments
 in some of my sites in the future, which can has this all-or-nothing
 parent-child structure).

 Leaving childs without a parent, means, leaving comments without a
 context, which can't make any sense for anyone. I wonder who could say:
 "Yeah, leave the comments without context". Like the example in the OP.
 Someone says something, someone answers to it, parent is removed, and the
 answer without the context, can make the author look stupid for having
 wrote that. Webmasters will not be accounting for this disorder because
 they cannot really see it. So we cannot really fully see what is the
 intent of an administrator, removing a single comment without having the
 whole context.

 In a hierarchized structure like the parent-child comment relationship, a
 child is always a reply to a comment. I used Reddit because is the most
 famous parent-child comment system in the planet, something like a
 placeholder is an expected behaviour and they use the placeholder system.
 With youtube is different: if you remove the parent comment all childs are
 automatically removed, also a potential expected behaviour.

 But leaving childs without parent is a defective behaviour. There should
 be some degree of accounting for this in core by default, not entirely
 relying in plugins to fixed (specially if we really plan to fully support
 a quality comments component, obviously), and maybe write a `dev-note`
 with the conclusion on how this will be “officially” handled for the
 version that is planned to be released.

 Personally, I think, that how it's being handled is not a real design
 decision but just mere chance by how currently other hierarchical post
 types are handling the parent-child relationship (like Pages). But pages
 are not of the same nature of comments. Comments hierarchy is always a
 dependency, not an exception. Pages hierarchy can be of multiple uses.
 There can be a massive relationship, like some sort of inheritance or a
 fragile relationship, like just an organizational structure (for example,
 all the items starting with A). In the case of comments, again, the
 relationship is always, indistinctly, massively correlated (answer-reply).

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/63931#comment:10>
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