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Allow users to leave threads with members who are invalid or have been destroyed
Closed, ResolvedPublic

Description

The original reporter describes encountering this issue:

When I want to remove myself from [a conversation with a user account who has been deleted], it says:
Validation errors: - New thread member "PHID-USER-dcvzt53lyugukyivjyol" is not a valid user.


Original Report
Is there a way to delete Conpherence threads? At least a

./bin/remove destroy Z1

would be great, but maybe it should also be possible by UI.

I have a thread with a user who doesn't exist anymore. This thread shows up as "Unknown Object (User)" at my messages icon and at the Conpherence page. When I want to remove myself from the conversation, it says:

Validation errors: - New thread member "PHID-USER-dcvzt53lyugukyivjyol" is not a valid user.

This makes sense, so I would like to remove the whole thread.

Event Timeline

mirrom raised the priority of this task from to Needs Triage.
mirrom updated the task description. (Show Details)
mirrom added a project: Conpherence.
mirrom added a subscriber: mirrom.

We won't be adding this to the UI. Like with most other objects and applications, it is intentional that objects can not be permanently destroyed from the web UI. Among other things, this severely limits the damage a malicious or compromised user can cause.

Support for remove destroy and allowing you to leave threads are both reasonable, though.

epriestley renamed this task from Delete Conpherence Threads to Allow users to leave threads with members who are invalid or have been destroyed.Mar 30 2015, 12:14 PM
epriestley triaged this task as Normal priority.
epriestley raised the priority of this task from Normal to Needs Triage.
epriestley updated the task description. (Show Details)

I haven't reproduced this myself, although I saw one other similar report so I suspect it will reproduce easily.

The same issue happens when you try to add a new user to a thread containing a user that was destroyed. The destroyed user shows up in the list as Unknown Object (User) and I receive the same Validation errors: - New thread member "PHID-USER-…" is not a valid user. message.

I would also like to see complete purging of users from the DB, to ensure there are no more references that could cause trouble like this. Objects which are attributed to that user could be re-attributed to a dummy "destroyed user" (even one I have to create manually, if that simplifies the implementation for you).

Objects which are attributed to that user could be re-attributed to a dummy

Just rename the user account to "dummy1" if this is what you want.

I would also need to remove all linked authentications and the email address (and potentially SSH keys, etc), since I will have to reuse both. And in my case the user is already destroyed, so there is no way back anymore.

btrahan triaged this task as Normal priority.Mar 31 2015, 8:57 PM