[RFC|Accepted] Soft Delete

[imkingdavid]

I'm not really a fan of the term "trashing" - it is an extremely American word, and phpBB uses en-GB. However, en-GB doesn't really have any suitable equivalents.

I don't want to call it "trashing" either; it sounds very unprofessional to me. FWIW the term on computer OS's is "recycle bin", not "trash bin" (at least on Windows, which covers the vast majority of users). Also, I think using the term "trash" would confuse users that are used to a "Trash Bin" forum MOD that moves posts to that forum; this doesn't move posts, it just hides them.

I personally would vote for "deleting" and "permanently deleting".

I agree here as well; if we have to drop the word soft and change hard to permanent, that would be the best option.

FWIW terminology used in competing software (from what I can tell):

• vBulletin - "soft delete"/"physical delete"
• IPB - "Hide"/"Delete" - NOTE: From what I understand from this topic, hide is basically equivalent to Unapprove/Disapprove, and Delete is functionally equivalent to Trash Bin; I do not see an actual phsyical deletion described in that topic.

As for SMF and myBB I cannot tell if either one has it in the core, though I think there are MODs for it; in most of these cases, it is called "soft delete".

I wouldn't be against a simply "Hide from view" or even just "Hide" button, and then "Delete" would be just like it is now. So instead of the soft delete terminology, you could have

Are you should you want to hide this post from public view?
[] Check to permanently delete this post.

That being said, I kind of like the "Phsyical delete" terminology...

[MichaelC]

I personally think soft & hard delete is the best; it is not hard to deduce the difference. However hiding & deleting would be better for new users.

[Pony99CA]

If users could undelete posts that they soft deleted themselves, I would use "Hide" or "HIding". As they can't, it's hard to come up with a good term.

I agree with Callum about "trashing", although for different reasons -- "trashing" also has connotations of "ruining", as in "He sure trashed that hotel room."

Maybe "recycling" (as in the Windows Recycle Bin), but I'm not a fan of that, either -- you're not really "recycling" the bits until you hard delete the file. With either "trashing" or "recycling", the user might also think that he could recover the file himself, which doesn't seem to be the case.

Do you see where I'm going here? Allow the user to recover his own soft deleted posts (unless a Moderator soft deleted them, in which case the user wouldn't be allowed to recover the posts). It makes things much easier to describe -- users (and moderators) could "hide" (soft delete) posts or "delete" (hard delete) posts.

Is it too late to do that?

Steve

P.S. To me, this is very similar to the permission allowing users to lock their own topics. phpBB allows users to lock their topics, but doesn't allow them to unlock them. That seems crazy. Why shouldn't I be able to unlock a topic that I locked? Maybe I have a follow-up to add, or maybe I locked it because discussion got too personal and I wanted a cooling off period, but now I want to unlock it.

[brunoais]

Do you see where I'm going here? Allow the user to recover his own soft deleted posts (unless a Moderator soft deleted them, in which case the user wouldn't be allowed to recover the posts). It makes things much easier to describe -- users (and moderators) could "hide" (soft delete) posts or "delete" (hard delete) posts.

If the moderator does not want the user to be able to edit or delete the post, then lock it. By locking it, it is clear that the post is meant to be kept as is. If the moderator hides it and then locks it, then it is to be meant to stay hidden. If the moderator just hides it, then, if the post owner wants (and has permissions to do so) would be able to recover the post into its former state.

P.S. To me, this is very similar to the permission allowing users to lock their own topics. phpBB allows users to lock their topics, but doesn't allow them to unlock them. That seems crazy. Why shouldn't I be able to unlock a topic that I locked? Maybe I have a follow-up to add, or maybe I locked it because discussion got too personal and I wanted a cooling off period, but now I want to unlock it.

I think that's not supposed to happen. From the code I read, what's supposed is:
If the user locked, then it can be unlocked by the user. If the moderator locked, then the user is not able to unlock. I think there's no way to enforce an unlock...

[MichaelC]

P.S. To me, this is very similar to the permission allowing users to lock their own topics. phpBB allows users to lock their topics, but doesn't allow them to unlock them. That seems crazy. Why shouldn't I be able to unlock a topic that I locked? Maybe I have a follow-up to add, or maybe I locked it because discussion got too personal and I wanted a cooling off period, but now I want to unlock it.

I think that's not supposed to happen. From the code I read, what's supposed is:
If the user locked, then it can be unlocked by the user. If the moderator locked, then the user is not able to unlock. I think there's no way to enforce an unlock...

Nope, its purposeful, it doesnt store whether the locker was the topic owner or not. Feel free to create a new RFC and lets head back on-topic

[nickvergessen]

My current implementation does not leak information to the user whether the post is "soft" or "hard" deleted, unless he has both permissions. And as previously discussed, the use of allowing self-restoring is not worth the heaviness on queries+logic and should be optional, leaving it to extensions or mods.

Btw, here are two screens form the delete confirmation dialog, image 1 is with both permissions and an approved post.
image2 is with a softdeleted post:


If a user would only have 1 of the delete permissions, he would just see the questions.

[imkingdavid]

I suggest changing the language in the second one from:

The post is already soft delete, you can only hard delete it.

to:

The post is currently soft deleted; this action will permanently delete it from the board and cannot be undone.

[imkingdavid]

Also, I think that instead of having the checkbox for soft delete, make it a checkbox for hard delete, and make it unchecked by default.

[brunoais]

@nickvergessen
I like it! Anyway, there's one big detail I don't like that imkingdavid already pointed out:

Also, I think that instead of having the checkbox for soft delete, make it a checkbox for hard delete, and make it unchecked by default.

Else, I like what I'm seeing.

[imkingdavid]

@nickvergessen
I like it! Anyway, there's one big detail I don't like that imkingdavid already pointed out:

Also, I think that instead of having the checkbox for soft delete, make it a checkbox for hard delete, and make it unchecked by default.

Please don't just say "I don't like"; give some reasoning. IMO It is a much more intuitive interface to default to soft delete and make the user "opt-in" for hard delete. This makes it much less likely that a post will accidentally be hard deleted.