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Soft Delete Custom Message Displayed to Members


Iegend

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The current soft delete feature is very useful! You can temporarily 'hide' messages from users with the ability to 'unhide' messages (or delete and restore).

The moderators with the correct permissions get to see the deleted post. However, the deleted post disappears completely from view without a trace. This creates a negative tone towards regular users that moderators may actually delete posts they don't like, which isn't good. Moderators get a trace of the message, however regular users do not.

So what I was looking for was a system that shows a message to members in place of the soft deleted message. This way:

  • It doesn't look like moderators are talking to themselves when they're trying to address an objectional post on the forums
  • Users know that moderators are not completely deleting posts they don't like, but are hiding them from view

I'd see why this wouldn't be necessary for hiding threads at the moment (though it would be useful for threads as teasers for new updates in a news forum for example), however I think it would be useful for posts.

Deleting posts sounds much more negative than hiding them.
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Personally I don't think I would like the idea of displaying a message to all members, however a message to the affected user(s) would be nice, perhaps a personal message where it says like "Your topic 'Moderators sucks' has been locked for the following reason: Trolling and insulting".

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Well I see why you wouldn't need such a message for hiding threads atm. You could just move them to the trash can.

Tbh, I think that there needs to be a feature which allows us to cater for more communities. For example, there are some communities that would rather know that a post has been hidden on their thread rather than have no trace of it at all. An example is if community competitions are being held.

If a competition is being held which requires immediate soft delete of incoming posts to prevent cheating, then it would be nice to have the ability to show a message to all users so that they know that answers have been submitted.

At the end of the day, this could become an optional feature where you could turn the system on and off and have the ability to choose what message is shown to regular members. Hiding it completely from view looks like you're completely deleting posts. :/

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Make members able to see deleted posts then? And don't allow them to view deleted content. That way they will see the red "deleted" post but can't toggle its content to view it. If that's what you're asking it's already there.

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Hmm, I think I remember seeing something like that. Problem is, then everyone sees these little pink boxes around these forums and messages such as 'qued posts'. Those are further details which tbh, only need to be seen by moderators.

There should also be an ability to stop people from seeing all of those pink boxes and not be able to toggle it. I'll look at what you've said already though.

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I thought you wanted them to see the little pink deleted boxes? I mean, isn't that what you asked for? Having members able to see that there are deleted content? You gotta make up your mind about what you want xD Or I'm completely misunderstanding what you're asking for.

They don't see "qued posts", I assume you're referring to "Unapproved posts" that are placed in moderation qeue? They only see deleted posts. And you can easially stop members from seeing the pink deleted boxes by just editing that setting in the usergroup settings.

Basically, if I understood you correctly, you want to:

Allow members to see deleted posts and topics
Disallow members to see the deleted content

If you set those settings in the "Members" usergroup in ACP they will be able to see that there are deleted posts/topics but can't toggle their content.

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Thanks for your replies Tan. When I was referring to not wanting small pink boxes, I was referring to those when you look at the topics list and there is a coloumn for the number of replies. That box turns red with a '-' sign, linking to all the soft deleted posts.

This would be unecessary if I only wanted to keep the posts hidden from view, with a notice in place of them. The fact that there is still such a tool in the replies area indicates to me that this feature was built mainly more users with moderation abilities only.

It would be better if I was able to switch that off for users. So current suggestion:

- Hide feature with notice in place of posts shown to all members (needs to be more user friendly, rather than mod friendly for this purpose)

If you have any idea as to how to combat the problem I'm already having by changing some CSS code, please tell me! :D Thanks for your replies so far Tan :smile:

Edit: btw when I use soft delete with notices for members in the mobile theme, they can still see the contents of those messages even though I turned the ability to see the contents off :logik:

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