Disallow permanent deletion

[nrep]

I'd like to make another suggestion for future forum versions. It would be great to disallow the permanent deletion option for super mod/admin usergroups. I never totally remove any content from my forums, so that there's always some sort of audit trail or record of the post - and I'd like to be able to enforce this option so that it also applies to super moderators. I'm sure a global or usergroup option to disallow hard delete would be a simple addition :).

[.Ian]

Agree about this.

I do not want anyone to delete posts for good, even staff.

[Ohio Riders]

I'll throw a plus one in the mix.

[Ryan H.]

Isn't this how it already works? As of 3.2, 'hard delete' just hides content from the forum or topic; you can see it in the Moderator CP.

[Andrej]

Isn't this how it already works? As of 3.2, 'hard delete' just hides content from the forum or topic; you can see it in the Moderator CP.

It would be great to [color=#FF0000]disallow the permanent deletion option for super mod/admin usergroups[/color]

[Ryan H.]

His point is that he wants everything to leave a trail, he doesn't want anything permanently deleted. That's how 3.2 works, even for hard-deleted content. It doesn't actually delete anything, it just puts it out of sight.

[Feld0]

His point is that he wants everything to leave a trail, he doesn't want anything permanently deleted. That's how 3.2 works, even for hard-deleted content. It doesn't actually delete anything, it just puts it out of sight.

There is an option in the ACP for the deleted items in the Mod CP to be pruned. I lost some of the content in there because it was set to prune after 5 days by default. I changed it to something ridiculous like 100,000 days, but it still bugs me a little that I cannot disable it entirely.

On the note of leaving a trail... you can effectively "lose" much of it if a member decides to edit his or her post. I've had it happen where a member starts a topic, then edits his first post to a message like "please delete this". I have absolutely no idea what he had said, but as an admin, I probably should. Adding post history/revisions would be very, very helpful.

[Misi]

Adding post history/revisions would be very, very helpful.

Very,very,very helpful.

[Razor S Edge]

There is an option in the ACP for the deleted items in the Mod CP to be pruned. I lost some of the content in there because it was set to prune after 5 days by default. I changed it to something ridiculous like 100,000 days, but it still bugs me a little that I cannot disable it entirely.

On the note of leaving a trail... you can effectively "lose" much of it if a member decides to edit his or her post. I've had it happen where a member starts a topic, then edits his first post to a message like "please delete this". I have absolutely no idea what he had said, but as an admin, I probably should. Adding post history/revisions would be very, very helpful.

I have my members set to only allow post edits during the first 2 hours. After that only a Global Mod or Admin can edit any post.

[Feld0]

I have my members set to only allow post edits during the first 2 hours. After that only a Global Mod or Admin can edit any post.

This works for many forums, but can be an issue on others where topics depend upon the first post being used to keep track of something (you get quite a few topics like this on gaming forums, mostly directories of one kind or another). It's also not a true solution because a member still has 2 hours (or whatever time limit you set) to edit or "blank out" their post - that may be enough for the moderation to completely miss it, and it seems only right to me that the moderation team should have access to every bit of data that members post on a forum.

A member on another forum I administer once started a personal, and very serious topic (not going to say what it was, for the sake of said member). Because it is a fairly active forum, it spawned a number of replies quite quickly. But by the time I came back online, the member had already blanked out the post, leaving all these grave replies that didn't make much sense out-of-context. Luckily, this was a vB forum so I was able to have a look at the post revision history and find out exactly what had happened. And... I'm very glad I did.

[AlexWright]

Just set the number to 0 in the "Delete after X Days of being in Mod CP". Seems to be the null value to save all posts made.

[Aisha]

I just disabled the task. Is that not the same or something? >_>

[nrep]

On the note of leaving a trail... you can effectively "lose" much of it if a member decides to edit his or her post. I've had it happen where a member starts a topic, then edits his first post to a message like "please delete this". I have absolutely no idea what he had said, but as an admin, I probably should. Adding post history/revisions would be very, very helpful.

Yes, I'd also like to see a post log - this would be extremely useful too, for the very reasons you've already mentioned.

[*José Antonio]

Or even a history of edited posts and can restore them. I remember a mod that did this, but it would be nice to have something like that come by default in IP.Board

[Ohio Riders]

If you edit a post, mods/admins can't see a revision history? Really?

[Misi]

If you edit a post, mods/admins can't see a revision history?

No,they can't.

[RObiN-HoOD]

This is definitely needed!!! I now use a mod for post histroy but still I would very much like to see that!

[RObiN-HoOD]

Is this perhaps possible to do with a hook or skin change to disallow mods/supermod to see and/or permanently delete the content? Perhaps only even able to restore it. I, as a root admin, want to be the only able to restore deleted content.

[SWadmin]

Definitely on the bandwagon for this. Anyone with a huge forum (mine has several million posts and usually 100 plus people online at any time) has to have many moderators and you can't always completely trust them all. Not having any kind of ability to have a trail to fall back on is really bad.

We used to use vBulletin and this feature actually was invaluable in a criminal case we had to help with. One of our users had threatened suicide and then the next day edited the post. In vB it was no issue to see what the post had said and send the info on to the lawyers but in IPB we never would have been able to do that.

[TheHeartSmasher]

A nice security feature that could be added is full auditing of all actions by users, staff and admins. So if a user edit's their profile, sends a pm, changes their signature, updates their password/email, etc. the original and additional changes are captured so if needed can be restored or audited. Maybe not storing the exact contents of a pm but storing that they sent a pm to a user and or deleted it could help with fighting spam and other unwanted user actions.

This would really help for analysis of compromised accounts by logging the user's ip addresses of their sessions then being able to look at their actions associated with the IP, hostname or user account. This way if you have a friend, co-worker or boss that only looks at the forums from certain locations you can tell if something is wrong when their IP address is listed as coming from another country or notice they are browsing from a Windows XP based computer when they only have Windows 7 and deleted or edited a large amount of items like threads, posts, user profile information, group titles, etc.

One other option that might add an additional layer of security is an option to require authorization of the user's IP address via an email when they log in that can be required by all usergroups or a select few user groups customized by the board owner. So the user can login with their credentials but cannot do anything else until they have verified their ip address via email with the ip set to expire in increments of 7, 14, 30 days.

[XiuzSu]

I agree, the revision history should be added. The scenarios mention have also happened to me many times.

[Heyhoe]

I too think this is a resonable request. Being able to see post revision history makes total sense. This could just be done from the front end with a list of date/times in the post, the most recent of which is displayed to mods/admins you can then click the dates and the post will drop down, revealing the previous post. Quick and easy.

[connorhawke]

A workaround I used in IPB 1.3 with regards to something along the lines of a "soft delete":
Prevent [Super] Mods from deleting threads/posts by switching off the relevant option in the Admin CP, but provide to [Super] Mods a Topic Multi-Moderation option to move selected threads/posts to a "Trash" forum.

And +1 for a post edit history.
Something like vB's system (with a post comparison feature) would be great, but make it better than vB's system by permitting the post edit history to be available or updated even when an "edited by" notice is not displayed or updated.