Feature Proposals » Delete to Trash subweb

Motivation

When you delete a topic or an attachment, you may want to move it to the Trash subweb of the current web instead of the Trash web.

On a large TWiki site, the Trash web needs to be cleaned up periodically. Otherwise, it gets too big and takes too much storage space.

Let's say there is a bulletin board implemented on TWiki. Articles are posted, edited, and deleted. The owner of the bulletin board may need to keep deleted articles for later reference. That might be crucial if the information handled on the bulletin board is of high stake.

Description and Documentation

If TRASHSUBWEB preferences variable is set to "on" on WebPreferences, the delete operation moves to the Trash subweb of the current web instead of the Trash top level web.

What should happen if TRASHSUBWEB is "on" but there is no Trash subweb? In that case, a delete operation should fail and cause an exception. It's possible to resort to the top level Trash web the feature doesn't work that way for the following reason.

If it resorted to the top level Trash web, it might end up losing data against the intention of the web owner. TRASHWUBWEB being set means the web owner wants to keep deleted topics and attachments. But the owner may forget to set up the Trash subweb. In that case, if TWiki resorted to the top level Trash web, the web owner may not notice the lack of Trash subweb and deleted content of the web is lost when the Trash web is cleaned up.

For TWiki Administrators, this may increase inquiries to them. TWiki should be for the users - web owners and web viewers - a bigger number of inquiries shouldn't be a big problem. Besides, inquiries to TWiki Administrators can be mitigated by WebSpecificWIKIWEBMASTER (showing web owner's email address instead of TWiki Administrator's address).

If TWiki Administrators don't like to increase inquiries caused by TRASHSUBWEB, they can set it to "off" on a site-wide configuration topic and finalize it.

Examples

Impact

Implementation

-- Contributors: HideyoImazu - 2012-11-08

Discussion

I support this. It looks like no impact for default installation.

-- PeterThoeny - 2012-11-14