Keep messages permanently, solution idea.

[coldreindeer]

Problem

Currently users cannot keep images or messages or files permanently.

Proposed solution

If there was a role permission that allowed users to permanently keep a message without it expiring by some method a bit like pinning a message but instead of pinning it would remove the expiry by clicking on an icon before sending a message that would work well I think.

Even if only self-hosted servers could have this feature this would be an acceptable way for allowing a way to keep messages around forever, theoretically.

Notes (optional)

It would be more manual than simply sending messages and it never expiring for every message so you wouldn't accidentally send huge amounts of messages with no expiration by mistake. It's the same concern as another post in the discussions however what I have suggested here is a completely different solution.

Checks

• I searched for existing discussions and didn't find a duplicate.

[Catoklysm]

I believe chat messages do not expire and only media/files do so. Personally not a big issue as you can host images and files in other places and embed them in chats, this is usually what I do when I share images from the internet - just have them embed.

I believe the 3 years that (small) media takes to expire is a very long time and in most cases the media I share is not relevant enough to stay around for even a month. Myself I would like the option to have media expire earlier to not have my media floating around Fluxer for so long.

[coldreindeer]

I was more thinking for about self hosting, since if every message can expire then you wouldn't have to worry about space even if your server hardly has any storage. Ie a 250gb storage. I'd be fine if the majority of pictures expire unless marked otherwise by someone with a specific role perm like a mod would have. Typically I'd personally only want pics to stay on a rules type channel or the occasional pic from a competition winner or smth like that. Mostly thinking for a long term self hosting perspective. It would also lighten Fluxers non-self hosting load if it worked this way too. Perhaps a way to change the length of time even images don't expire. Perhaps a way to exclude images from expiring on specific channels types as well, such as forum channels when/if that gets added. Most images on average I'd be fine if they expired in 3-6 months for my own use case since people can re-post if they want.

[SolunaCG]

I really like this idea, especially for self-hosting. I think tying it to a dedicated role permission is important, otherwise users could simply mark everything as permanent and effectively bypass Media Expiry.

One thing I'd especially like to see is the ability to mark an existing attachment as permanent after it has already been uploaded, e.g. via the attachment/message context menu:

Keep permanently → exempts the attachment from Media Expiry
Use normal expiry → puts it back under the instance's normal expiry rules

A dedicated permission such as “Manage permanent media” / “Exempt attachments from expiry” would make sense to me, so this could be given to moderators without necessarily tying it to “Manage Messages”.

Ideally this could also respect channel permission overrides, so for example moderators could preserve files in a resources/rules channel without having that ability everywhere.

It might also be useful for these actions to appear in the audit log.

“Permanent” should only mean exempt from automatic Media Expiry — deleting the actual message should still delete the attachment normally.

[coldreindeer]

Yep. That was more or less what I was getting at and thinking about. 😄

[probablyjassin]

I think messages don't expire, but yeah I suppose a way to exempt specific attachments from the instance expiry policy at send time may be cool

[Chailotl]

Messages do not expire, any attachments you favorite will not expire, and attachments viewed during the expiry renewal period will get another 3 years before they expire (which means that rules channels will generally be unaffected)

[coldreindeer]

Still... doesn't hurt to have it as an option imo. Not specifically for a rules channel but say you wanted a channel that had images in that you never want to expire then you can. Even if the stuff doesn't get looked at for more than a few years.