Soft Delete or Hard Delete?

[Thomasss]

So what do you usually prefer, soft deleting topics or hard deleting topics, and what warrants a hard delete of a topic? With soft deletion, is hard deletion even needed now?

 

[Forces of Steel]

Do you mean to say that you still intend on keeping all unwanted posts and threads with soft deletion?

If so, then sure, because you just never know if a post or thread was unnecessarily deleted, such as if a moderator was having a bad day and being too hard on suspected members.

 

[Cierra]

Soft delete. I never hard delete unless it's a test thread or sometime really violating the rules (it would have to be pretty major).

 

[Sapett]

I always soft delete as well, but I rarely do that in itself. I usually just move posts or threads to an archives board on my forum.

 

[THF_Martin]

I always soft delete now the feature is available in 1.8. I only allow my staff members to soft delete too.

 

[el canadiano]

I'm with THF_Martin. Always soft-delete is the way we do it as well. Having records of what has been deleted is something that I think is important. In fact, I explicitly revoke the permission for my own level as well.

 

[Thomasss]

I'm glad I am not the only one who completely removed the ability to delete something permanently. :lol:

I prefer soft deletion as well, and it's not like you could break your web host's ToS, they could not see the post so you would be in the clear, which is awesome. I'm glad soft deletion is the new thing now, it's so much easier to track and log, and easier to restore rather than restoring actual deleted posts. 😛

 

[MeganChan]

Typically if a topic is like old I'll move it to the old topics area and after its been there for a bit I'll hard delete it. I really haven't had to delete topics of other members other then topics and such being old.

 

[Ash]

I don't delete posts at all on my site to be honest, I just move them over to the archives in case we may need to use or view it in the future etc. Soft delete is much better as if you delete something by accident it can always be recovered.

 

[BorderLab]

Soft Delete - Post/thread was inappropriate [for whatever reason] but it ends with that - not a big infraction.
Moved to Hidden Forum - Next step after soft delete: if it was a moderate/serious problem and may need to be referenced later (also gets a URL to it posted in user notes)
Hard Delete - Reserved for spammers who get banned so staff doesn't have to deal with the pages stuffed with useless content.

 

[Mikaya]

I prefer to soft delete, because it's easy to refer back to the original thread just in case you (or another staff member) need look at it for any reason. Spam can be deleted completely, though.