Retire Pledge & Buy-to-Unglue campaigns properly (model + UI + migration + tests)

[rdhyee]

BLUF (updated 2026-08-03)

What this issue is, in plain English: Unglue.it historically offered three campaign types; two of them — Pledge (Kickstarter-style) and Buy-to-Unglue (sales advance an ungluing date) — are being retired. "Retired" means: no new campaigns of those types can be created or launched, while the two live legacy campaigns (#126 Lagos 2060, #137) keep operating under their original terms. An earlier attempt (#1168) did this incompletely at the model layer; this issue scoped doing it properly across model, UI, migration, ToS, and tests.

Status: implemented — all checkboxes done via PR #1213 (retire-pledge-b2u-1195, 11 commits). The PR is CC+Codex+LGTM after a 3-round adversarial review (verdict), deployed on test.unglue.it with a test-suite red-list identical to master's baseline (zero new failures), and live-verified (ToS, FAQ, /rightsholders/).

What remains before this closes:

1. ⚖️ Eric's legal review of the ToS changes + confirming the effective date — the two checkboxed merge gates in the Retire Pledge & Buy-to-Unglue campaigns (#1195) #1213 PR body
2. Merge → deploy (test → release PR → prod)
3. Separate decisions, deliberately out of scope here: fate of the two legacy campaigns (leave vs convert to THANKS), admin lockdown, close-or-rebase FAQ copy: judgment-call edits + ⚠️ decisions for Eric (#1165) #1168. Follow-up test coverage: Add mocked-Stripe end-to-end tests for THANKS contributions (follow-up to #1213) #1215.

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Split out from #1168, where the FAQ-copy PR also disabled new Pledge/Buy-to-Unglue campaigns at the model level — but incompletely. Do this as a deliberate patch.

Background: #1168 reduced Campaign.type choices to THANKS only and blocks launching REWARDS/BUY2UNGLUE. The copy edits there are fine and ship separately; this issue tracks doing the actual retirement coherently.

Required work (CC + Codex review of #1168):

• Fix crash: the new may_launch = False for REWARDS/BUY2UNGLUE appends no problem message, but activate() reads self.problems[0] → IndexError instead of a clean UnglueitError when an old-type campaign is activated directly. Append a launch-block problem message. (Retire Pledge & Buy-to-Unglue campaigns (#1195) #1213 a4734082 + hardened fail-closed in bf4611ad: anything ≠ THANKS is unlaunchable with a clean message; regression tests incl. unknown type 99.)
• Campaign.type default=REWARDS becomes a non-choice → set default=THANKS (or keep choices and gate differently). (default=THANKS; legacy choices retained so existing campaigns validate/display.)
• Add the migration for the choices change (Django 4.2 serializes choices; makemigrations --check will flag it). (core/migrations/0030_retire_pledge_b2u.py — state-only, no DDL; applied + --check verified clean on test.)
• UI/creation paths still offer Pledge/B2U: rh_views.py still initializes new campaigns as type 2; rh_works.html, manage_campaign.html, work.html, faq_b2u.html still present those flows. Make the front-end consistent with 'no new Pledge/B2U.' (All creation paths closed: rh_views.py c_type→THANKS, OpenCampaignForm offers/accepts THANKS only, rh_works.html rewritten; also FAQ menu, libraries.html, rh_intro.html. manage_campaign.html/work.html/faq_b2u.html deliberately retained — they display/manage existing legacy campaigns, per the block-new-only decision below; faq_b2u.html stays URL-reachable for legacy supporters but is de-linked from nav.)
• Tests: existing tests assume default pledge campaigns can launch — update for legacy type 1/2 behavior. (force_activate() helper simulates pre-retirement launches; new CampaignRetirementTests; payment/tests.py pinned to type=REWARDS; THANKS launch-and-activate covered.)
• Decide: keep existing/live campaigns of those types fully functional (display/handling) while only blocking new ones (that's the current intent). (Affirmed and implemented as stated. The further question — whether to eventually convert S3 storage #126/turns out pubdate messes up distinct, MySQL doesn't support DISTINCT ON #137 to THANKS — is a separate Eric decision, tracked in the Retire Pledge & Buy-to-Unglue campaigns (#1195) #1213 meeting agenda.)

Refs #1168 (copy PR), Eric's intent: 'Buy-to-Unglue, Pledge no longer offered.'

[rdhyee]

⚠️ Important scope finding: campaign retirement must update the legal Terms, not just the FAQ

While splitting the safe copyedits out of #1168 (now shipping as #1196), a Codex review caught — and I verified — that ebookfiles.html is {% include %}'d into terms.html (the legal Terms of Service), not only faq.html:

frontend/templates/terms.html:158:{% include 'ebookfiles.html' %}
frontend/templates/faq.html:267:{% include 'ebookfiles.html' %}

And terms.html still defines and obligates Pledge / Buy-to-Unglue as binding campaign types (TOC §25–26, definitions §43, obligations §96+). So Eric's #1168 deletions of the B2U/Pledge file-requirement lines would have silently changed the contractual "Standard Ebook File" criteria in the ToS.

Implication for this issue: retiring Pledge/B2U is a coordinated change across four surfaces, which must land together:

1. Model — core/models/__init__.py (the half-baked rip-out: IndexError in activate(), default=REWARDS non-choice, missing migration)
2. UI — rh_views.py still inits campaign type 2; rh_works.html / manage_campaign.html / work.html still create/offer Pledge/B2U
3. FAQ copy — campaign-content removals deferred from FAQ copy: judgment-call edits + ⚠️ decisions for Eric (#1165) #1168 (Ungluing-Campaigns link, donation-sentence rewrite, 3 factual Q&A deletions: tax-deductibility, in-print-author, copyright-holder-vs-rights-holder)
4. Legal Terms — terms.html Pledge/B2U definitions + obligations, AND the shared ebookfiles.html file-requirement lines

Plus the borderline FAQ/marketing copy: libraries "participating library" onboarding block, libraries "We've added"→"We added" tense, faq "(English)" drop, and the faq_t4u "libraries that participate" benefits (inconsistent once onboarding is removed).

This is exactly why the copyedits were split off into #1196 — they ship safely now; the campaign retirement is one deliberate patch here.

[rdhyee]

Draft PR up: #1213 — one coordinated branch (retire-pledge-b2u-1195) covering model+migration, UI creation-path, FAQ removals, ToS retirement notice (separate commit, per Eric's 2026-07-22 approval), and tests. The two live legacy campaigns (#126, #137) are untouched; their conversion to THANKS remains an open decision. Tests are written but await a run on test.unglue.it (no local MySQL).

[rdhyee]

[CC] Issue body updated: added a plain-English BLUF and graded every checkbox against #1213 (all six done — three untouched templates verified as deliberate legacy-display retention, not gaps). Issue stays open until #1213 clears Eric's ToS legal review and deploys.

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