Invisible Posts

[CMDR-ZOD]

At first sorry for my bad English. Still I hope most of you can understand my request.

I'm Administrator of an Mid-Size Forum with 120k Posts which i am running under phpBB right now. But we have decided to convert to smf. We had some considerations about trial Moderators be able to make unreparable damage by deleting posts which arent supposed to be deleted by our opinion. So I wrote an invisible hack which doesn't allow Moderators to delete posts but set them invisible to normal users. So every mod and admin can control the decision and if the user complains revise the decision. Additionally the post count goes down/up and the "last post" in forum and index view is updated if needed. Only Administrators can delete posts permantly or in acp pruning invisible posts which are older than x days. I thought about writing the mod for smf but it would (as always) be much easier to have a feature like this implemented especially because I think this would be usefull for many big forums.

It would be best to being able set it active or not on global level.
Per group configurable if deleting is allowed and/or invisible setting.
Pruning option for invisible posts which are older than x days.

Of course much more would be possible but this is how I've done it with my mod. If nobody likes the idea (especially no admin) I will try to make a modification.

[xenovanis]

Well, you could use the recycle-option and don't allow Global Moderators to access it. This way deleted posts will be stored in a 'recycleboard' in stead of being deleted completely.

[CMDR-ZOD]

But what makes the feature so usefull is that the posts remain where they are. We've done it before with a recycle board but that isn't realy nice, clean or functional. With this you dont have to search where the post was and follow the discussion reviewing the context in which the post stood.

[[Sauron]]

The idea sounds very nice. An invisible function would be more usefull as the "recycleboard" workaround. It is like CMDR-ZOD said, with the recycleboard you wouldn't be able to follow the diskussion It is much harder to make a decision if one post is free for the trashbin or not without the context. I would appreciate such a nice feature.