There is already a note at the sweep itself and the sweep all button:
“Note that some unused terms might belong to draft posts that have not been published yet. Only sweep this when you do not have any draft posts.”
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by
Lester Chan.
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Lester Chan.
Thread Starter
jeremy
(@jeremyrandall)
Hi Lester. Thank you for your reply. Unused categories are not orphaned data, just like draft posts aren’t orphaned data. If someone has created a category it should be safe from deletion. Would you consider changing the behavior so categories are not deleted? Thank you.
Hey Jeremy,
I will not be changing it unless there are overwhelming consensus in it. Some context, I build this plugin for my ex-company where they have a lot of data that needs to be cleared, including categories/tags that have not been assigned any posts, and hence the feature =)
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This reply was modified 3 years, 10 months ago by Lester Chan.
I think unused categories should be cleared and should be included in wp-sweep.
Thread Starter
jeremy
(@jeremyrandall)
When a site administrator creates a Category it is an intentional action, just like creating a Draft Post is an intentional action.
That intentional action has nothing to do with whether a created Category has any Posts assigned to it.
A site administrator may intentionally create Categories even if they never plan to add Posts to those Categories, if that is a way they prefer to run things. Those Categories are not orphaned data, as there is no requirement that Categories and Posts must be connected to each other for Categories to be valid.
A common use case may be a site administrator creating many Categories first, as a way to help them internally organize their future content plans, then slowly filling in those Categories with Posts.
But creating Categories for any reason at all, really, still means they are valid data, which, again, has nothing at all to do with assigning Posts to Categories.
Contrast all of that with actual orphaned data, data such as unused revisions, that are not intentionally created by the site administrator, and would be expected to be removed by default.
It’s too risky, however, for many or most site administrators when something which they created intentionally might be treated as orphaned and removed.
Thank you Lester for your replies and consideration. I’ll need to find another solution at this time. If anything changes regarding this data handling, please let me know. Kind regards and best wishes.
