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Related: What happened to FavoriteCount? - my educated guess is that a NULL value indicates a question has never been favorited or bookmarked, and 0 that it was. Since the values are so different from what the column name conveys, shouldn't it just be dropped? That would break some old queries of course, but with developer tools it's often better to throw an exception rather than produce deceptive results.

(Alternative title: ALTER TABLE Posts DROP COLUMN FavoriteCount - but I was afraid that would encourage people to post all kinds of SQL questions here ...)

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  • Hmm maybe also time to merge bookmarks into saves? The tag wiki for bookmarks is now just wrong, and the tag itself is misleading, making people think bookmarks still exist.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 13, 2022 at 17:08
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    @ShadowTheKidWizard either that, or keep them separate (but point out that bookmarks no longer exist and are replaced by saves). The merge from [favorites] to [bookmarks] was a no-brainer because it was the same functionality - this one I'm not sure about that. Sounds like another question :)
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Dec 13, 2022 at 17:16
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    Technically it should be dropped from PostsWithDeleted. Posts is only a view over the actual table ...
    – rene
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:11
  • Don't they even still have emailhash from the dawn of time when that was public?
    – Laurel
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:18
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    I totally agree, we'll take care of it
    – Kyle Pollard StaffMod
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:23
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    @ShadowWizardChasingStars: Related request (though not quite the same, since I assume your suggestion is more about merging the tags on MSE): Change the default tag [bookmarks] to [saves] on per-site metas
    – V2Blast
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:26
  • @V2Blast yeah, related, not same. Thanks! :)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:29
  • @Laurel I'm pretty sure all email hashes have been cleared from SEDE long ago.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 13, 2022 at 18:29
  • @ShadowWizardChasingStars The column still exists on the Users table, but it's blank in every row.
    – Laurel
    Dec 13, 2022 at 19:22
  • @rene how do you know? :O
    – Braiam
    Dec 13, 2022 at 19:48
  • @Laurel yup, that's why "cleared" and not "removed". ;)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 14, 2022 at 8:22
  • @Braiam inspection of the schema: data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/1688218 or implementation details
    – rene
    Dec 14, 2022 at 18:38

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