nor should it create or preserve orphans, which is the case i'm talking about.

i get what you are saying and it makes sense that you would preserve the content (their side of the convo) for users that participated in a convo with someone that no longer exists, but one case (or cases) slips through.

whether it be the importer or wherever, it really doesn't matter to me. matter of fact i didn't put this in the 'bug' forum yet.

genuine orphans are created in a rare case, where a private message topic is created that only member #1 (if he could login) would see in his viewmessages.

other members who might at some time been part of a back/forth with this member (#1 or #x - deleted member), but they deleted their half of the convo won't see in their inbox their half of the convo.

i hardwired viewmessages to member #1 to see and i get a list of all the topics that he/it could supposedly have, where no one else is participating in.

so those posts are essentially orphaned and serve no purpose to the new board.

to be fair, the number is very low (20 or so out of 50,000 PMs imported), but they are genuine orphans.

my original count query was flawed and didn't take into account that you save content on both sides of the convo and that member #1 IS indeed valid in order to preserve their content.

i also assume that somewhere in the viewmessage part of things, that the board disables the 'reply to' feature, if you'd be replying to member #1. or i'd hope that be the case wink

in any event, i just pruned those orphans for now.

fyi screenie (viewmessages.inc.php as user#1):
[Linked Image from sirdude.com]

ps: my guess is that those PMs were generated by quickie signups that then spammed with adverts on the old board. the admin deleted them, but their legacy remained. classic_import.php, dorebuildpms() could handle the orphan purge