"Open Draft" appears instead of "New Topic"

This Site Feedback 🐞 This forum issues and requests
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1

If a draft has been saved (which can happen without a user clicking “save draft for later”), Discourse only offers the option “Open Draft”; “New Topic” is unavailable until the “draft” has been dealt with.

Unfortunately, in English “open draft” can mean “create a new draft” as well as “open an existing draft” - users will think “why am I not allowed to post here” until they figure out what is going on.

Can I as a user turn off this “draft” functionality in Discourse? If not, is it possible to turn it off system-wide? I don’t believe that it is needed for functional parity with either the old forums or the help system, which is what these forums are supposed to replace.

2

Is this resolved?

It seems to be working fine now, and the draft I wrote seems to show up in the ‘Activity’ column.

3

No, just checked - it still happens.

Er, what? Drafts created by accident by me can be found by clicking on your initial displayed at top right for the profile menu, then the unlabelled icon at the top right of that, and then as “Drafts” in the vertical menu that appears. There’s nothing (for me) in “Activity”, which is above “Drafts” in that vertical menu.

UI is supposed to be consistent and discoverable - Discourse’s is neither.

Edit: Oh, (expletive deleted) - after you’ve deleted one draft you get to an entirely different screen (in my case https://community.openstreetmap.org/u/someoneelse/activity/drafts), and that does match what you describe above. For extra confusion that screen has both horizontal and vertical menus. I have no idea how to get to that screen directly.

4

It’s sad that it hasn’t been solved.
What is the difference in the environment between you and me? :slight_smile:
Would you like to try drafting in different categories?
I drafted in different categories, and my ‘Activity’ has two drafts.
Screenshot 2022-11-13 at 21-51-31 Profile - adreamy - OpenStreetMap Community

5

I think we’re talking about different things, to be honest. I’m saying “I can create drafts by mistake, and Discourse’s UI makes it look like you can’t create a new topic when you have previously created a draft”, and I think you’re saying “I can see the drafts that I have created by looking in my profile”.

6

I saw your first comment and tried to draft it, and I found that I couldn’t write a new post on a draft like you.
And when I tried again later, I saw that you could write a new post without throwing away the draft, so I commented on your post.

Now let’s wait for help from others. :slight_smile: :thinking:

7

I found no way to disable drafts. If the current feature can be improved, the best way is to let the authors know the issues we found and how it can be improved