All members can now view deleted posts

[Matt Derrick]

It occurred to me in this thread that giving everyone the ability to view content that has been removed by moderators might be useful in giving context to both why a person was banned and why that content was removed in the first place.

So, all members can now view 'soft' deleted content (i.e. content removed by moderators) if they wish. The deleted content is collapsed/hidden by default in order to keep these posts from derailing thread topics, but clicking the 'show' button will reveal the content of that post if you'd like to view it:

Now, as the admin of StP I occasionally have to 'hard' delete content (mostly spam) and when I do this (only admins can 'hard' delete content) the post/thread in question is permanently removed from the database so it can not be viewed by anyone (even me, since it's permanently deleted). Just an FYI, it's part of the job of running a message board, and honestly, anything i delete is generally for a reason (it's very boring, uninteresting, or irrelevant to this site -- i.e. spam).

Anyways, again this should add some more transparency to moderator/admin actions, but also not get in the way of people having important discussions that don't want to be distracted by these kinds of posts.

I can't think of much of a reason why this would be a bad idea, but if i missed something, please let me know!

 

[Coywolf]

I think it's a good idea...

 

[Tude]

Works for me - transparency.

 

[highwayman]

When a new user joins and sarts flaming/trolling many profiles, threads then gets deleted. Does there content die with them & get purged from STP completely? I noticed just such an incident where several comments were made on my status/posts by a former user. I now know that these comments/posts were simply used to bait me into conflict. I have since deleted the comments as I now know that they were not legitimate dialogue. Seeing that the user was deleted, will my initiated soft deletes remain view-able for ever? Will their content be hard deleted or is there a way to have all content removed along with them? Could this be a way to give a constant platform for questionable content that lead to those users being banned accessible by a secondary click to view deleted content?

 

[Matt Derrick]

When a new user joins and sarts flaming/trolling many profiles, threads then gets deleted. Does there content die with them & get purged from STP completely?

when we ban a user, their content remains unless we chose to 'soft delete' it. even then, you can view the content by clicking the 'show' button on the collapsed/hidden post. as explained in the OP, we only 'hard' delete posts (i.e. permanently and irrevocably remove from the database) from spammers or in rare situations where the content is just so utterly offensive we don't want it here in any way (very rare).

in the situation you're speaking of (a user making many trolling/flaming posts on many profiles) we would do one of two things. first, if the user had a decent amount of non-rule breaking content before they got banned, we'd probably just remove the offending content (using the 'soft' delete function). second, if the user created the account with the sole purpose of causing shit (i.e. no valuable contributions whatsoever) we'd probably just run the spam cleaner on that account, which permanently removes all of their content, profile info, and user information. this is a 'hard' delete, since in most cases (spam) there is no purpose in retaining an archive of that information.

Seeing that the user was deleted, will my initiated soft deletes remain view-able for ever?

so, when you delete a comment on your profile, it can only be seen by yourself and StP staff. other members of stp cannot see comments that have been removed from your profile either by yourself or by the stp staff. your profile is yours to control, so that's why other users can't see deleted content from your profile they way they can see deleted content in threads.

Could this be a way to give a constant platform for questionable content that lead to those users being banned accessible by a secondary click to view deleted content?

i'm a little unclear what you're asking here, but 'soft' deleted content in threads is not viewable by default, so you really have to make a concerted effort to go through each one and click 'show'. deleted content is not indexed by google, and can't be viewed by people that aren't logged into the site.