Move Messages
It would be really useful for moderators to be able to move messages between text channels in a guild.
This could involve a new permission: 'MOVE_MESSAGES'.
Some concerns about this idea have been raised, but do not seem to be fatal. These are touched upon as follows.
Could this be abused?
It could only be abused to the same extent as existing powers such as kicks, bans, and message deletions. Guilds could have the ability to control who wields the power, preferably through a dedicated MOVE_MESSAGES permission. They could also monitor its use through the Audit Log. If the power were to be abused under these conditions, the issue would seem to lie with the powerholders in the guild in question, rather than the power itself.
Could members be confused?
If a message is moved without any indication, this could be confusing, as members may not realise that their message has been moved. This could be helped by having an automated system message which takes the place of the moved message to explain that the message has been moved.
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Clean and organised environments support efficient and effective communities.
3 years and 21 pages of discussions concerning this essential feature, yet nothing has been implemented.
What's going on?
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Whilst I haven't read all 21 pages of the discussion on this subject, I would like to also suggest the functionality below, even if this has already been suggested by others.
Admins (and possibly moderators) should also be able to move multiple messages at a time from one channel to another. Thus, when a channel's scope gets too big, it would be possible to split the channel's messages by sub-topics.
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This was a feature (for example) in phpBB ... 20 years ago!
And probably in most forum type things.
How is this still not a thing in Discord?
Is this technology devolution?
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Considering most of the recently published applications are written in Python or JavaScript, they are essentially technology devolutions. A long time ago we evolved from interpreted languages like Basic to compiled languages like C and C++. Even Java and C# are devolutions as they use intermediate bytecode that is recompiled at run-time.
You can really see a lot when you watch how much memory an application will use while running, if it is compiled program, excess memory usage means memory leak, but if it is interpreted, it's called delayed garbage collection ;)
When I use modern applications on my 20 year old PowerPC, I struggle getting memory usage above 256 MB and I'm usually using memory heavy applications like compilers. If I try adding more than 2 GB memory, that beast doesn't even boot. Development PC I bought in late 2019 that has decently modern 64-bit processor and 32 GB memory struggles to run same applications, which is hilarious.
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Mika Lindqvist I wholeheartedly agree. It's baffling to me why both Python and JS are consistently ranked to be the top programming languages even though they provide no real benefits for the developers that use them. Maybe you could argue that interpreted languages are okay for children to learn with, but every real system is built with compiled languages. Garbage collection has no place in critical systems like websites. I'd much prefer to free my memory by hand, or better yet, never use the heap at all just like God intended.
Frankly, modern PCs are a joke. With all their unnecessary performance and headroom for entirely irrelevant workloads like video processing, gaming and scientific computing, my single terminal window would run just as well in an 80's mainframe.
I write my own cryptographic algorithms with assembly.
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ROTFL
I'd love to see someone try to write an entire website in only assembly.1 -
How is it that this still not a function?
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Please add this functionality :/
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I'm wondering if this feature will be part of the new Forum channels?
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4 years...and 649 comments.
...can we say #NotGonnaHappen1 -
Really need this feature to manage a large community.
moving thread to other channel is also good
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Unbelievable that after 4 years and 650 comments this absolutely fundamental feature for an admin/moderator to move messages to correct channel is not yet implemented.
Deleting people's messages and telling them to repost in correct channel is rude compared to just moving it for them.
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...I have a feeling it's a technical problem. It's how they setup their data model, introduces a fundamental limitation: https://discord.com/blog/how-discord-stores-billions-of-messages
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One day Discord will need to switch from linear write model to random access write model anyways, so maybe then we will have the ability to move comments and threads between channels. Moving comments and threads will put as much stress on the database as editing or deleting older messages. If the data is not in cache, the database engine needs to load more than just the rows that are modified.
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That might be true but but literally every forum product I have used allows the moderators to move messages that are posted in the incorrect channel by members. Discord is the first product I have used that does not have this basic functionality. I would imagine person who sets up a Discord server with multiple channels comes up across this problem in the first few days of running their server.
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I get how their using the channel as part of the key field for a message would make a back end transfer of the message from one channel to another impossible. But I (as with most users) aren't particularly concerned about the back end. And by that I mean, I don't care if they literally move the message from one channel to another or modify the original message to be a pointer and create a NEW message in the new location (with the original message's content) or delete the original message or what exactly happens in the back end to make the front end look like the message moved. I care about the function. And even with the channel being part of the message key, there's no reason they can't find SOME solution to make "moving" messages from one channel to another possible. And anyone who says it IS impossible is probably being disingenuous. I've done a bit of work with programming and even more with databases and data management and I know that a system as robust as Discord appears to be should be perfectly capable of making the functionality we're asking for here happen, regardless of what it ends up looking like on the back end.
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Discord was designed for specific audience, but since that it has diverged a lot... I don't think they have enough staff to monitor what every Discord "server" does. Since I started using this support website, I haven't seen even single reply from Discord team. I'm really surprised that Guilded, which was supposed to become better than Discord is still based heavily on Discord codebase.
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Still not a thing even with the so-called "Forums" feature which is really just an interface for the existingThreads mechanic.
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Maybe we can just make a bot to do it?
In the end, it is possible to both delete messages and to edit (your own) messages. So it's not down to a principle problem of immutability.Support for this in the client and network would be nice, since it would make it more convenient GUI-wise, and then the messages could appear as from their original author.
Doing it with a bot might be possible, if the bot can delete the messages, then it could first create a copy of the message in the new channel, and then delete it in the original one. But presumably such messages would then originate from the bot. It could add a "originally from @user in #channel" line to make that clearer...
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Still waiting on this feature 💀
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We all are... None of the alternatives that were supposed to replace Discord have enough adoption, or haven't implemented the missing features we need yet...
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This still would be a great feature addition :)
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This is a NEED
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A workaround: Use a bot to move messages to another channel.
Pro: Achieves the objective
Cons: You have to do this for each message one by one. With the bot I used, messages could not be edited after they were moved.
This is the workaround I use. I found a bot named MoveBot (version 1.5). I'm not affiliated to it in any ways and there may be better bots for this purpose. If you know of a better workaround, please share!0 -
I need this today for my server and a bot won’t make it easier. Threads were a great feature to add but they never thought it through first. Sure if you know ahead of time your post will diverge you can label it a thread right then and there and all replies will be in the thread. But in reality no one realizes which comment is going to trigger a deluged tangent and by the time we realize we need a thread there have been a dozen posts or more. As owner I should be able to select each post that I want in a thread together and collectively move all of them under a new thread, or add them to an existing one. As it is now we can’t add a new post to a “thread” that already has been started. It creates a separate one. It’s a real headache.
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Discord development has been pretty dead for last few years... They do break things a lot, which suggests the development team is quite small and unskilled. Only real solution is switching to custom software and write it to have all the necessary features.
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I gotta disagree with you there Mika Lindqvist... Discord already has a ton of functionality, as well as working cross platform while offering advanced video and audio streaming features... The backend supports millions of users, and there's bots and integrations.
Writing an app that does all that, with a great looking UI and so many functions is a monumental effort, and Discord must have a *great* development team, regardless of its size.
Nonetheless, I really want this feature.
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Totally agree, Runger. Discord absolutely designed one of the best messaging/information sharing platforms I have ever used, all while preserving a cozy, close knit community feel. Regardless who it was initially made for, they quickly evolved to incorporate features that were wanted beyond that and did a fabulous, mind-blowing job. I even have a private server that is more or less my personal filing cabinet and not just for my digital life, and it blows away all other organizational tools I have ever used like bookmarking apps and resources like Pinterest. They should be commended for the fabulous work they have done in such a short period of time. That takes talent and skill, and yes, either a large workforce or an ingenious small one. I have to admit that for most things with Discord I’m constantly amazed and impressed at the quality as well as their listening to their user base.
But … even the best can accidentally overlook the importance of certain features and fail to respond proper or timely. This would be one area. The introduction of threads was an attempt to address our issues about the cluttering focus in channels and their execution of it was really inferior to their normal solutions to our problems.
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Most of the useful features were added more than 3 years ago... This suggests that the person who actually added them is either not active anymore or is working on too many things that we don't care about.
It's true that Discord has had bots for quite a while, but their bot API isn't stable in any sense and in more than one occasion, an upgrade has totally broken existing bots.
I'm not going to any audio or video features as I've not really used them or investigated how they are implemented.
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Implement this already.
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