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Currently, the only way to migrate comments to chat is if a "too many comments" autoflag is raised on the post, in which case there's a "move to chat" button in the flag dashboard.

Could this be changed so that the "move to chat" button is in the "mod" menu instead, so it can be accessed on any post?

This would be great for two reasons:

  • The autoflag might have been dismissed earlier, before the comment volume was a problem
  • A very clearly extended discussion may be taking place before a post has accumulated 20 comments

So, can we please be able to move comments to chat even if there's not currently a "too many comments" autoflag on the post?

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  • 4
    Additional reason: comments added after the chatroom was created (following the flag) cannot easily be moved to the already-existing chatroom. (And sometimes, you really do need to act before the auto-flag is generated.)
    – Andrew Leach
    Dec 31, 2014 at 21:01
  • Agree. Seth talked me through this, as I am a total noob (two weeks a mod) and it took up so much of his time, though he was extremely gracious. I am sure this will come in handy for others.
    – anongoodnurse
    Mar 8, 2015 at 10:50
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    @Gilles if there's some way to package this up into a userscript or something, while we wait for an SE implementation, I'd sure appreciate it!
    – Monica Cellio
    Apr 9, 2015 at 15:33
  • @MonicaCellio I'm the Unix scripting guy, not the browser scripting guy. This looks easy though, I'm sure lots of TL regulars can do it.
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Apr 9, 2015 at 18:48
  • @MonicaCellio I was going to make a userscript, but didn't because a SE dev said this might be implemented soon anyway. I could definitely make a script that adds a link in the "mod" menu if you wanted it though.
    – Doorknob
    Apr 9, 2015 at 19:06
  • @Doorknob here's the other post, which is about streamlining the whole "move to chat" process: meta.stackexchange.com/q/253087/162102 Sorry again for my goof! (And a second one: I read "link in the mod menu" as "link to the mod menu". Sigh...)
    – Monica Cellio
    Apr 9, 2015 at 20:18
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    Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
    – C. K. Young
    Aug 3, 2015 at 18:50

2 Answers 2

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This has been added in the one of the latest builds. It should now appear in the mod menu on any post.

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    Needs testing on posts without comments. Currently it dumps the moderator to a page that says:{"success":false,"message":"no comments found"}. Probably the menu option should just be disabled in that case.
    – Jon 'links in bio' Ericson
    Aug 5, 2015 at 22:16
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    @JonEricson The menu option is now disabled if there are no comments or if comments have previously been moved (the commonest failure cases), as of the next build (3643 for MSE/MSO, 2783 everywhere else).
    – C. K. Young
    Aug 7, 2015 at 0:38
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    @ChrisJester-Young you're the best!!
    – Taryn
    Aug 7, 2015 at 0:41
  • Even on success it's a little alarming: you get an otherwise blank page with a message like {"success":true,"message":"http://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/29206/discussion-on-answer-by-...","info":{}}
    – feetwet
    Sep 16, 2015 at 22:04
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I'm posting this here because I don't want to have to search for it again. This is currently possible by typing the following line in your browser's Javascript console (replace 12345 by the post ID).

$.post('/admin/posts/12345/move-comments-to-chat', {fkey:StackExchange.options.user.fkey});

(Originally posted by a fellow moderator but I don't remember who.)

Refresh the page afterwards to see the effect. This actually copies the comments, so you'll probably want to remove most of them.

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  • I needed to do this just half an hour ago and it took me a couple tries to get it right, maybe because I'm not used to the console or maybe because Firefox and Chrome are different, or maybe something else. I'd love a userscript-ified version of this. I also spent a good 5-10 minutes searching, so thanks for recording this here.
    – Monica Cellio
    Jun 30, 2015 at 2:09
  • @MonicaCellio Maybe the code has changed. Did you need to do more than change the post ID number?
    – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil'
    Jun 30, 2015 at 7:36
  • I didn't have to change the code, but I was puzzled by the results I saw -- I tried it in Chrome, saw no new comment appear, concluded it hadn't worked, moved to Firefox, tried again, got some sort of error (sorry, didn't note it), and saw the new comment. So I don't know whether it worked in Chrome but was delayed or didn't work there but did in Firefox. Anyway, I didn't have to change any of the code other than the post ID, so a user script that gave me a button/link/mod-menu entry/whatever to invoke this code with the post ID filled in would be great!
    – Monica Cellio
    Jun 30, 2015 at 13:07

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