Soft delete IS "hide". It is the same thing. So if you don't give mods hard delete but do give them soft delete....you already do exactly what we have recommended - do not give moderators delete ability, but give them "hide" ability.
You can control whether moderators see hidden content or not. So if moderators want it "gone", then simply don't let them see hidden content, and when they hide it - it's gone.
If you have to, you can rename "Hide" for your moderators to "Delete", and the end result is a moderator clicks "Delete", the item is gone from their view, and you as the administrator can later go restore or mass-delete these hidden items. It's the exact same workflow.
1) Our software has not been available since 1998
2) Virtually none of our competitors retain deleted content for later "really really" deletion, so we are not stepping away from any common convention
3) We only began retaining "deleted" content in an extremely recent version (3.3 or 3.4). Before that, as almost everyone would expect, when you deleted a topic or post...it was deleted.
What you already do on your site is effectively accounted for, as with almost everyone else who has replied with concerns. :smile: I realize no one likes to read "we are removing x", but this is a situation where we have opted to go with a simpler route that behaves as most users would expect (except for a small handful who are intimately familiar with the internal workings of recent versions of IP.Board), and that does not materially change any existing capabilities.
Drewbie reacted to bfarber in 4.0 - Simplification of deletion and approval process
