Have you or a moderator accidentally deleted a thread?

[Kit_L]

We just upgraded the board software to v. 4. One of our mods accidentally deleted a thread (we still are not sure what happened; perhaps the javascript that asks for delete confirmation did not get called—in any case, she swears that there was no warning of the deletion). And she was only reading content via an iPad (she does not type on this device). To log in, she had to request a new PW as this was the first time she had logged in since the upgrade. In trying to access the thread, she deleted it.

So I asked tech. support here if there is any way to restore a mod-deleted thread, and the answer was no.

We did recover it, though, and I thought I'd describe what we did, in case this might be useful to someone else.

I asked our hosting service to advise the times of our six-hourly backups (and most hosts do this automatically) and we found one that was made about an hour before the thread got deleted. We asked our hosts to make a copy of this version of the database and load to a hidden part of the site. We then used the mysqlAdmin function of cpanel to look inside. I searched the entire database with two key words and the database's wild-card symbol in front and behind the key words, as the mod could not remember the post title.

We ordered the resulting list (newest to oldest) to put the deleted one near the top and found it in a few moments; selecting the entry and clicking "Edit" revealed all the fields' contents, including all the deleted posts. I sent the relevant posts to the authors and asked them to re-post, after the OP re-posts his.

A bit laborious, but got the job done.

[Gabriel Torres]

To avoid this, do as we've done here. We configured so the permanent deletion option is only available to admins. Moderators have only access to the "hide" option. For the end user, the result is the same (topic is gone), but you have all topics still available if you need to recover them.

Gabriel.

[TAMAN]

Its best to just disable deleting permissions for everyone even your account 

make a section name it Recycle Bin and hide it on everyone but admins and moderators, then whenever you want to delete a topic we can just dump it in that section, for topic replies we just use hide  

we can not un-delete topics on ips4 and i find it too risky too give deleting permissions for moderators and even admins for many reasons especially if you have a gaming community when you piss cheaters/hackers off in game and the butthurt tries to do something else like find a noob mod/admin and hack then delete everything hahaha xD yes SH*t happens trust me  deleting permission for everyone is just not good 

[Kit_L]

Both excellent suggestions, and in the short term, have implemented Gabriel's. Will be doing Taman's next week when I get home. Sincere thanks.

[Gabriel Torres]

@Kit_L we even edited the language strings to replace "hide" with "delete", so moderators don't feel they are "underpowered" (also renamed "delete" with "permanent delete"). You could do this or rename to "soft delete".

[riko]

I just wish the warning was reconfigured forum/ACP to

Quote

are you sure you want to {insert_type/name} delete this?

and not just "are you sure want to delete this?"

That extra confirmation would be just the eye catching thing that makes one *not* delete something by mistake.
As I do know...

[The Old Man]

It seems really odd that that there is no confirmation dialogue before deleting a topic especially if there is no recycle bin setting. I never realised to be honest, but I can see on busy forums how that could be really troublesome.

There used to be a Trash Can forum option, you could set any forum to act as a 'recycle bin' in your staff or even admin forums for extra protection years ago, it worked well as I recall. A more modern method would be if IPS automatically emptied such a forum after X amount of days but gave Admins an option to 'empty now' as an override.