Public Moderation Actions - deleting posts

[mcfang]

Deleting a post or topic does not leave any trace for general users. It could be good to leave a placeholder post displaying that moderation has happened, or even simply hide the "deleted" posts so that only Admins/Mods can view them.

By this I mean it doesn't leave any record or notice for the general users to see that moderation has taken place. For example deleting posts or topics simply vanishes the post/topic either to the Recycle forum (if you have this setup) or gone forever.

Here is an example of what I am trying to describe, Note the "post was removed" posts:
hxxp:forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=645199&p=2 [nonactive]

From the Admin's side the posts are still there in the system and can be returned if necessary.

Could this be a good feature, or a mod?

[elfishtroll]

I think it would be too much overhead for too little net gain.

Does the forum example you cited actually retain the deleted posts?

generally, you want to keep database I/O to a minimum for everything you do, that is why many mods though ostensibly useful, may not be justified based on the overhead they generate.

With the recycle bin, the board ID is just changed to that of the recycle bin board, so a new record isnt actually created.

for the example you show, it could be that the text of the offending post is just replaced with the "Post removed, <reason>" text (as opposed to copying all of the data of the current post, all attachments, polls and images etc and creating a new post in a 'rejected posts board' then editing the offending record ( and presumably, the member's 'post count')


Generally,

1) a member would 'get the picture' w/o having to do all that
and
2) You generally DONT get a lot of posts that are bad enough to demand removal, but dont disrupt the 'flow' of the thread significantly with 'THIS POST WAS MODERATED/DELETED messages'

All this probably moot anyway, you can simply MOVE the offending post to a board designed for that function and the default setting will leave a post that says POST MOVED TO <board>... thats not exactly what you want done, but its pretty close