Deleting Blog Posts

[Wonder.]

Just out of curiosity, why can we only "soft delete" posts? A long time ago I deleted a bunch of posts and now it's just a huge list of titles with no bodies.

Is it so people can't post something bad then delete it before a mod sees it? If so, can't you at least hide the posts from the blog somehow instead of showing just the title?

Sorry. It's my OCD. It just looks really bad to me.

[StoppingTime]

Even sectional moderators can only soft delete posts. For other members viewing this, I'll explain the difference between a hard and soft delete below:

1. Hard Delete - When a post is physically removed from the server's database. This is almost never done. There are special cases when a post or thread will be hard deleted, and that's only if it's a post about something highly illegal, or a security risk. Only Global Moderators and Administrators have the power to hard delete items.

2. Soft Delete- The post is "hidden" from threads. Moderators can see soft-deleted threads in their section, users cannot see them at all in threads. However, as you said, if you delete a blog entry, it becomes "soft deleted" meaning there's still a copy of the post on the server.

If you truly feel the need to hard delete them, you can PM one of our admins and ask them, and they will decide.

[ImCoolBeans]

Even sectional moderators can only soft delete posts. For other members viewing this, I'll explain the difference between a hard and soft delete below:

1. Hard Delete - When a post is physically removed from the server's database. This is almost never done. There are special cases when a post or thread will be hard deleted, and that's only if it's a post about something highly illegal, or a security risk. Only Global Moderators and Administrators have the power to hard delete items.

2. Soft Delete- The post is "hidden" from threads. Moderators can see soft-deleted threads in their section, users cannot see them at all in threads. However, as you said, if you delete a blog entry, it becomes "soft deleted" meaning there's still a copy of the post on the server.


This is all correct, however the reason why nobody, besides senior staff members, can hard delete posts is because once something is hard deleted it is gone forever, leaving no trace that it had ever existed. The senior staff has a broader responsibility for watching over the site than sectional mods and users -- if it were possible for members and sectional moderators to do this then that system would not be able to work because then it would be possible for wrongdoing and serious violations of the rules to be mishandled or even swept under the rug completely.

[TheMatrix]

While soft deleting does cost more server space(although in today's world that's dirt-cheap anyways), it does allow us to keep reference on things that have been said. That way, if anybody makes a mistake and deletes the wrong thing on accident, we can still recover it.