The discussions in your Higher Logic Vanilla (Vanilla) community are automatically arranged by most recent posts (either discussion creation date or most recent comment post date). This means that every time an existing discussion receives a new comment, it will again move to the top of the list; you may not always want this to happen, however. If not, this is where the Sink feature proves beneficial.
- When you sink a discussion, it remains "sunk;" that is, it won't move to the top of the discussion list when new comments are added.
⭐️ EXAMPLE: A post is very popular but it's off topic for, or no longer relevant to, the discussion. Sinking this type of post is a good idea so it will slowly sink to the bottom of the discussions list.
When should you use this feature?
Let’s say a user posts something that you don’t want to receive extra attention, but you don’t want go so far as closing the discussion or deleting it completely. Sometimes moderation requires controlling the most visible discussions without being seen as preventing free speech in your community.
The Sink feature works perfectly in these situations. Sinking a discussion doesn’t immediately move it to the bottom of the discussion list (which would be seen as an obvious manipulation to your users), but it prevents it from being able to move up when people comment on it. This means that it will organically move down the discussion list as other posts receive engagement, moving it off the first couple of pages that get the most views.
Required permission
Admins and Moderators must have the Sink permission enabled for any Category they want to manage with the Sink option.
✔️ TIP: Vanilla recommends that this permission be limited to a few select Admins and Moderators.
📝 NOTE: This permission is set per Category and is described in the Default Category Permissions section of Roles & Permissions.
Sink a discussion
- Navigate to the discussion that you want to sink and click the ellipsis (…) menu.
- Select Sink.
The discussion is immediately set to a sunk state, meaning additional engagement via comments from this point on will no longer bump it back to the top of the discussions list (i.e., it will slowly sink).
- To “unsink” a discussion, navigate to it, click the gear icon, and select Unsink.
📝 NOTE: Sinking a discussion doesn't affect its present position on the Recent Discussions page.
Additional resources
Click the link below to access a video expanding on what you learned in this article.
