Possibility to change author of content

This! Exactly what we need. It is such a waste t o write content all over, and on top of that: to lose the (high) value of the content in search engines. 

Looking forward to this feature.

Hello all, thanks for all your input :)

We’ve been investigating into this idea recently, please check this research article and let us know your thoughts!

Upvoting here! Definitely useful

Hi all! I’m happy to announce an initial BETA release of a feature addressing the need to publish content on behalf of another user. If you’re interested, please join this group where you’ll find additional information. 

Thank you and looking forward to your feedback! 

@Cristina - regarding the feature you are beta testing, what is the full scope? Will this future feature only allow a different author on new posts? Or are you also adding the ability to change the author of an already-created topic? I’m looking for the latter and it seems that is what the OP was originally asking for as well. 

Hey @alexandra.culler! The scope for the feature we’ll be shortly releasing is to be able to publish new articles and product updates on behalf of another user. Indeed, the initial idea submitted here was for the ability to change the author of an already published topic. However, based on all the use case presented on this thread where the author has to be different, we identified also the need to be able to publish with someone else as the displayed author. We looked at the 2 needs from a technical point of view and it made sense to start working on this feature first, and lay the groundwork for the ability to change the author of a published topic, which will be planned for the near future. 

That’s pretty disappointing considering the ability to post on someone else’s behalf was already available in the API. I have several users who were incorrectly imported into our forum following the data migration in August. Their posts were either attributed to the wrong account, or were made “anonymous” and attributed to no account at all. I contacted support about this almost 2 months ago and have seen no updates. It would be nice to be able to just do the work myself at this point even if it’s via the API.

Beyond that, there’s the simply problem of company turnover that isn’t addressed. We have several people who leave our company but continue to use our product and engage with the community. I would like to be able to transfer ownership of their content to their new accounts. Alongside that, I’d like to be able to transfer ownership of product-related items to the new product manager instead of deleting them and re-posting them on his behalf. As was mentioned before, deleting the content is bad for SEO and not-ideal for users who are subscribed to or have bookmarked a particular post. 

All that isn’t to say I’m not appreciative of the progress being made - I just hope the additional scope is actually carried out in the near future instead of 2-3 years down the line :/. 

Thank you, @alexandra.culler for your feedback. Previously the API would only accept moderators to post on their behalf, now the chosen author can be a normal registered user.

It is our intention to follow up with the extended scope to cover changing the author after the topic is published and I will keep you informed about this. 

We’re happy to say that this idea has been delivered partially. You can now create articles and product updates on behalf of another user. Check out the announcement and the tutorial for more details :)