Merge threads functionality

They could just be merged by date, while keeping the oldest OP.

Another way I can think of is listing the different OPs under the main OP. And then if a comment was merged from another OP, that comment explicitly shows which OP it belongs to.

I'm sure there's a way to do it without creating a mess, since there are some forums that allow this.

1. Earliest post is kept by default, or the mods can override by manually selecting one of them if it makes more sense. That is common in most forums that support merging.
2. Every other, former thread (demoted post) is then gathered at the top, with their own thread replies indented once inwards (recursively throughout all subposts). If necessary, extra visuals could be programmed so that it would be clear that these posts are merged threads and not regular replies.
3. Finally, all regular replies to the thread that is kept stay as they were, including any future replies.

If it is too hard to organize 2. before 3., just sort them by date (default) and mark the former threads so they're easy to distinguish from regular posts.

It's standard to default to the most well-constructed/most informative thread, favoring the earlier posted thread in any circumstances where a clearly favorable choice isn't present. For the current phishing topic, Defi's thread would have been the intuitive choice as the primary thread. Some forums simply merge by timestamp alone, though I believe those typically were just the ones which treated thread posts identically to normal posts, which made the structure less favorable for allowing for selection among topic posts.

Then the messages - we will keep messages in a reply chain intact, but what do we do with the order of the message chains?

Those would sort by creation time, either as a result of default forum settings (as many forums sort replies by timestamp to begin with). or by deliberate code construction to that end. This is similarly standard. There are some forums which simply append thread replies in sequence, based on the timestamp of the thread topics involved.

I'm not pushing for a merging feature, mind you, I'm just noting that established practices already exist for the points you mentioned. Whether those practices have merit or not, I can't say, but I never noticed any detriment from the forums that utilized thread-merging (which is a pretty normal feature for forums to have, so it's not uncommon to come across).

Kotor's approach to the current matter was likely the ideal way to approach things, though not every spammed topic is necessarily going to warrant staff making an official PSA for.