[RFC|Accepted] Soft Delete

[DavidIQ]

No I don't think they should be able to restore a deleted post. It would most likely disrupt the flow and understandability of the topic.

[Pony99CA]

No I don't think they should be able to restore a deleted post. It would most likely disrupt the flow and understandability of the topic.

Isn't that the same reason given to prevent deleting a post?

If soft delete follows the same rule as hard delete -- the user can only delete his post if it's the last in the topic -- you could also add that rule for restoring the post. That way no flow would be disrupted.

If a user can soft delete any of his posts (because a moderator could always restore them), that would be the rule that allows disrupting the flow, not the restoration.

Steve

[canonknipser]

If you want to enable the user to

• review softdeleted post deleted by himself
• undelete softdeleted post deleted by himself
• review unapproved posts

just add a column "user_id_delete" and store the user_id of the user who performed the softdelete action. If it is the same as the user who has posted then allow undelete action. If the user_id is different it indicates a moderator action and so don't show the undeleted post to the user.
If user_id_delete is empty (=0), it indicates a unapproved post, so user can be enabled to edit it (not undelete, because it is not softdeleted).
Moderators should be able to set the "post locked" flag for softdeleted and unapproved post. This should prevent the user to undelete or edit those posts - maybe a moderator wants to start an internal discussion about the unapproved post before approving, so he can lock the content.

If soft delete follows the same rule as hard delete -- the user can only delete his post if it's the last in the topic -- you could also add that rule for restoring the post. That way no flow would be disrupted.

And, the post should still be the last post in the topic, so if there are new post after the softdeleted post, the user should not be able to restore the post.

Another question: what happens to tracking mechanism?
Should a undeleted post be marked as "unread"?

[nickvergessen]

I'm not sure there would ever need to be a case where we allow both soft deleting and disapproving on a single post. If it is unapproved, do not allow soft deleting it, and there is no way to go back and set a post to unapproved after it's been approved.

If you are talking about my images, that is the resulting topic status depending on the status of the included posts, and in that case this is easily possible.

How about merging the functionality of disapprove into soft delete? In other words, currently when a post is disapproved from the queue, it is hard deleted. So why not just make it soft deleted? Then you don't have two different types of visibility.

Do you mean, that when a moderator disapproves a Spam post, it is soft deleted and he has to perform a second action until it's finally hard deleted? That would be not acceptable!

just add a column "user_id_delete" and store the user_id of the user who performed the softdelete action. If it is the same as the user who has posted then allow undelete action. If the user_id is different it indicates a moderator action and so don't show the undeleted post to the user.
If user_id_delete is empty (=0), it indicates a unapproved post ...

This sounds like a good idea to me

... so user can be enabled to edit it (not undelete, because it is not softdeleted).

Editing of unapproved posts won't (and shouldn't) be possible, as he will be unable to see the topic of his post.

[canonknipser]

Editing of unapproved posts won't (and shouldn't) be possible, as he will be unable to see the topic of his post.

Why not? If he answers to an approved topic, he can see the topic atm, but not his own post ...
You are right if he starts a new topic, but why not make the topic visible to the user (as it is visible to the moderators?) Same principle as for post, just with existing columns: if (user_id = topic_poster and topic_approved = 0), he has the right to edit (if it is allowed for the post), but no right to reply ...

[imkingdavid]

Do you mean, that when a moderator disapproves a Spam post, it is soft deleted and he has to perform a second action until it's finally hard deleted? That would be not acceptable!

Well, I'm assuming you're adding the "hard delete" checkbox on the delete confirmation page, right? It wouldn't be difficult to do the same thing on the disapprove page, so that if they actually want to hard delete a post it doesn't take multiple steps.

[EXreaction]

just add a column "user_id_delete" and store the user_id of the user who performed the softdelete action. If it is the same as the user who has posted then allow undelete action. If the user_id is different it indicates a moderator action and so don't show the undeleted post to the user.
If user_id_delete is empty (=0), it indicates a unapproved post ...

This sounds like a good idea to me

This is essentially the same as my modification does? If you add another column, the post_approved column can be completely left alone and not used.

[nickvergessen]

Okay some questions are up for discussion.

Case 1:
If a topic has:

• 1 approved
• 1 unapproved
• 1 soft deleted post

and the approved one is "hard" deleted, what status should the topic have? [softdeleted/unapproved/both]

Case 2:
Currently if a topic is unapproved (has only one unapproved post, nothing more), the topic starter is the author of that post, but this is only visible to moderators which can moderate the post anyway.

Now: If m_approve and m_restore are two different permissions, and the topic has one unapproved and one soft deleted post. which information should be stored in the "first_post_*" fields and to which of the moderators [m_approve/m_restore] should this information be visible?
Note: we can not store both informations and display the one for the specific permission

[Pony99CA]

Okay some questions are up for discussion.

Case 1:
If a topic has:

• 1 approved
• 1 unapproved
• 1 soft deleted post

and the approved one is "hard" deleted, what status should the topic have? [softdeleted/unapproved/both]

Case 2:
Currently if a topic is unapproved (has only one unapproved post, nothing more), the topic starter is the author of that post, but this is only visible to moderators which can moderate the post anyway.

Now: If m_approve and m_restore are two different permissions, and the topic has one unapproved and one soft deleted post. which information should be stored in the "first_post_*" fields and to which of the moderators [m_approve/m_restore] should this information be visible?
Note: we can not store both informations and display the one for the specific permission

I think that the answer to both is the same -- the first post in the topic controls the topic. Plus, I'm not sure that scenario would be a very common case -- how often would somebody soft delete a post when they can clearly see a post awaiting approval above it. I suppose if the person only had soft delete permission but not approval permission that it could happen -- but that's just an argument to make soft delete/restore and post approval the same permission.

Forgetting about that scenario for a second, consider the following:

If a topic has:

• 1 approved
• 1 unapproved
• 1 more approved post

and the first approved one is "hard" deleted, what status should the topic have? [unapproved/approved]
(Underlining just illustrates changes to the scenario, not answers.)

Making the first post control the topic status is consistent and reasonable. Yes, it's not perfect -- if the second approved post above referred to the hard deleted post without quoting, you'd lose context. Of course, that can already happen today if a moderator deletes a post that a following post referenced.

If you do it the other way, what happens when the unapproved post gets approved? Does that author suddenly become the topic starter? If not, then the topic starter would appear to be somebody other than the person who wrote the first post, which will confuse users.

Steve

[nickvergessen]

If you do it the other way, what happens when the unapproved post gets approved? Does that author suddenly become the topic starter? If not, then the topic starter would appear to be somebody other than the person who wrote the first post, which will confuse users.

Yes, that does happen. Topic starter is always the first approved post. The question now is, who should be the topic starter, when the approved posts are gone?
Btw current implementation is no help there, as it has a bug. you will have an approved topic that does not contain any posts for normal users. (which should than not show up...)