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Recover deleted posts,


Marafa

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It is clear, but adding a recycle bin for delete would not make anything muddy. That is common.

48 minutes ago, craigf136 said:

Purging hidden items can and will purge posts hidden for other numerous reasons, which is why hide and delete  / soft delete are and should be separate functions.

This is the crux of it. They have separate functions. If you look through my forum you'll see hidden posts in topics, so mods/admin can see the "trouble" posts but still follow the topic conversation since they were not removed. A purge would remove this history. Hide should be left alone as hide and not made the new soft-delete. I get having just Hide and Delete, but please consider a recycle bin, thank you!

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Sorry Charles, that just makes no sense.

Hide - Hides a post
Unhide - unhides a hidden post
Approve - requires content that requires approval by staff to be approved
Unapprove - means content posted which may have been approved or posted has been unapproved for specific reasons and left to be reviewed later. If it's unapproved, it will be flagged differently from hidden posts and easier to track what needs attention.
Delete - it deletes content

There was no soft delete function previously, it was called delete - yes it was soft deleted and was purged after set date but it was deleted, no matter what way you look at it. All of these have a specific function, completely separate from delete. 

The biggest issue here is still being completely overlooked.

Where is the recover of deleted content option? That's what a majority of people will be requesting, it's a function that most people are used too, people migrating to IPS will be used too, people upgrading from previous versions will be used to. Why is it not available now? simplification is a cop-out answer tbh.

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I totally understand it, just can't moderate like I used to.

Seems to be more confusion now, with renaming of functions to try to mimic what we had before.

Maybe someone can come up with a recycle bin mod for a reasonable fee. With an admin setting for manually empty, or empty every (x) days. Posts viewable in the cp separate from hidden posts. 

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4 minutes ago, chilihead said:

Seems to be more confusion now

There is no confusion. Everyone is quite clear that delete deletes and hide hides. Granted people may want a complex serious of delete/hide options but that is not the same as being confused.

I'm not really sure what to say. If you don't want to delete something then don't click delete. If you are concerned about accidental deletes then remove access to delete to your moderators and only give them access to hide.

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here is a thought  why not utilize the ARCHIVE function with content that is "deleted" you are only flagging record that are to be deleted - and just like the ARCIVE function that moves contents from the main table in the background the content that has been marked or flagged as deleted is omitted from public facing views & searches, and then in the background such content is moved to another dedicated table - then the system can eradicate items that have not been salvaged from this quarantine in reasonable time. 

this would also apply to possibly when deleting a user and all their content  their content could be put into this quarantine the basic operation of the public side of things would in all appearances the content would be "deleted" but the failsafe should the site admin have a change of heart could resurrect the content or restore such content if it was caused by a rogue moderator, with out having to lace back a database using a "backup" but using the content of the quarantine table (near line storage).

@Lindy instead of a dialog box "Are you sure?" and the default button being "OK" the better design pattern for such destructive operation would be to make sure the default button is the least destructive. Also taking a page from other software when something is permanent with no "native, or intended" undo, perhaps a field that the user must type in the text string "DELETE THIS CONTENT" or "I AGREE" or something to this effect - then nobody can blame the cat from running across the keyboard. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Charles said:

There is no confusion. Everyone is quite clear that delete deletes and hide hides. Granted people may want a complex serious of delete/hide options but that is not the same as being confused.

I mean when they see the content is gone and wonder why it didn't soft delete like it did before. Yes it is crystal now, once they know. I'll just request a recycle bin for delete and leave it at that, as I don't think renaming functions or using other functions as this or that solves anything, and when you have to suggest to rename Hide, it might mean something is amiss.

 

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11 minutes ago, Charles said:

delete something then don't click delete. If you are concerned about accidental deletes then remove access to delete to your moderators and only give them access to hide.

What if an admin with permission to delete, deletes the wrong topic/post in error for example?

It happens and will happen again.

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Yep, that would be awesome. Some form of recycle bin that gets cleared ^_^ The "Delete" option is designed to be permanent but it is nice to have some backup in place when you make a mistake ^_^ 

I also agree that some sort of recycle bin feature shouldn't be there to replace the hide feature, it should only exist to recover mistakes(For example: The delete feature removes the item from view but not from the database for X days, after X days the post gets removed from the database. Inside that time an administrator can "unflag" a post which will restore effectively restore it).

The system is crystal clear as is and I believe that there shouldn't be any additional "removal" option, less is more so to speak but the end user is and stays human and it is always nice to be able to recover from human failures(I am guilty myself of checking the wrong content accidentally for deletion :p  Sure, blame me but I would have appreciated it if I would be able to undo my mistake a few minutes after it happened :p

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  • 2 weeks later...

The simple solution to this is what I've just implemented in 5 mins. I've set up a saved action which is called 'moderator delete' which moves the content to a 'deleted content' forum I created as a sub forum of our moderator forum. I've removed the ability of mods to delete content now so they'll use the new saved action and I can purge that whenever I fancy. :)

So...

  1. Create 'recycle bin' type forum visible to mods/admin
  2. Create saved action to move content there
  3. Remove moderators delete permission
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10 hours ago, GMIC said:

I would love deleted posts to be stored in a trash forum that only I can access. That way I can see them all in one place and filter, keep or purge them as I see fit. 

a single "trash" forum only works when it preserves the original form where it was deleted from. moving a topic from a public space to a private space does not do this.  A restore operation would need to know where to return the deleted item. 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just wondering if IPS has any plans to work on this.

We cannot do what we did in 3.4 it is not the same. I can hide and delete in 3.4 and both go into "Removed Content" of modcp. The deleted content will purge but the Hide won't purge. That's why we use Hide to simply hide posts from members we want to preserve for member history, and delete mistakes/delete requests etc.

The way it is now, since Delete is permanent, I can restrict mods. Then they have Hide, but there is no way to distinguish which get purged so if purging you lose the hidden posts. Plus we don't want to see mistakes be "hidden" in topics that should be deleted.

Thanks

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/13/2015, 1:40:41, Lindy said:

This has been discussed elsewhere. The functionality of hide, delete, really delete, undelete was confusing and redundant. There are confirmations on deletion - it's not like MS Word where you highlight text, hit delete and it's instantly gone - in that case, yes, an undo button is useful. In this case, you have the opportunity to check your work so-to-speak. If you're worried about moderators clicking through confirmations and not paying attention to what they're doing, then instruct them to hide content and forbid them to delete - you can then review and purge later. You can create a custom moderation actions to move a topic to a trash can forum instead of hiding or deleting it. There's a number of potential solutions, but we are not interested in storing deleted-but-not-really content... again, see the hide feature and by all means, feel free to provide feedback on any enhancements you'd like to see to that. 

In short: we're saying no to this one. 

 

@Lindy I thought soft delete was still in IPB?

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22 hours ago, ZakRhyno said:

@Lindy I thought soft delete was still in IPB?

It's removed. Option now is use Hide, but then our hidden-to-hide posts and intended-for-deletion hidden posts are mixed so purging is not an option. So basically the posts we want deleted will take up disk space now unless we tediously go through and hand delete.

Still hoping for a soft-delete function for Delete. Then those can be purged but we have that safety net.

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I'm still really disappointed with IPS that they do not see the negative aspect of using hide to soft delete and that having a soft delete with a specified retention is not beneficial. Everyone else has the ability to soft delete (xenforo, PHPBBB, vBulletin, MS Word, Excel, Open Office, Wordpress, the list goes on). 

Soft delete and HIDE are two completely different functions. 

  • Moving a post/topic to a hidden forum does work but if it needs to be recovered, it has no understanding of where it needs to be moved back to.
  • Hidden posts and topics can be very unsightly and can create a mess - something I'm not implementing.
  • Soft delete retains the post / topic, it knows where it has come from and can easily move it back "if" a error has been made.

Removing delete function from Moderators, doesn't resolve the problem of restoring deleted posts/topics - even Admins can make mistakes, how do we as admins resolve an accident? Sorry but we can't recover your deleted post/topic, not a very good user experience. 

As @chilihead has said on numerous occasions, purging via routine functions is no longer an option when you hide posts as a soft delete function, genuine posts hidden for whatever reason (that don't require deletion) could be deleted as a result.

Just out of curiousity, the progams IPS use for coding the software, I bet it has an undo function?

 

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On 10/14/2015 at 0:56 PM, Charles said:

There is no confusion. Everyone is quite clear that delete deletes and hide hides. Granted people may want a complex serious of delete/hide options but that is not the same as being confused.

I'm not really sure what to say. If you don't want to delete something then don't click delete. If you are concerned about accidental deletes then remove access to delete to your moderators and only give them access to hide.

@Charles I'm still confused, how do you handle the problem that I would like to mods to delete stuff/hide whatever, but not really delete it. (Soft Delete) and I can restore it if need be. Is there a place that will tell me when something is hidden are something like that so I can check myself that a mod did something wrong like a GUI are something for an Admin side of things? I would like to stay inform, if the mode just do something and I know nothing about it and the system don't tell me that a small problem.

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Perhaps it's just semantics but I don't believe "hide" is clear because I would think most use the term for something very different. I'm not sure that hide does what I'd want it to ideally but I think it's probably workable. If it's semantics then it's annoying but nitpicking. Much more important things to focus upon.

I can hide things in Windows but I want the files to exist. I just don't want them visible for certain users. Same goes for a forum. I may want to hide items from users that I only want admins to see. That doesn't delete anything. 

I can delete files I intend to permanently remove. They go into the Trash bin and thus they are "soft deleted." To analogize, this is deleting, a little notation may appear but nobody sees these files - neither the users nor the admin. This comes in VERY handy when you a mistake occurs you realize later, there is important data you need to retrieve about someone abusing your board and you'd like a full record of stuff, including things you thought were unimportant earlier.

When I empty the Trash, that is actually deleting or "hard delete" the files - they are permanently gone and I recover the space. We all know what this is. It can be the periodic purge when you're darn sure you don't need anything. 

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Why would it be so terrible to store deleted content for a limited time with the option of recovery, IPS? It certainly wouldn't hurt, but it could prevent a lot of mistakes.

Hide vs soft delete can actually be used for different things. You'd soft delete something which at the time of said action you'd want gone, but with the option of regretting in the near future. You could hide content that you don't necessarily want to disappear permanently, but just be invisible for a period of time. The key difference here is whether you want it to permanently disappear automatically after a while.

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