On the topic of douglas dodging, why do we even have post deletion available to non-managers? All the forums I've been on prior to and after GM do not allow anyone below moderators (equivalent to managers here) to delete their own posts (or any posts for that matter). All I've seen is it used to douglas dodge or similar. I've found that deleting a post for managerial reasons usually means removing it from that thread and storing it in an archive for reference purposes.
If you want to genuinely retract a statement, delete the post. I've done it, many people have legitimately done it as well. I should point out any post deleted is 'soft deleted', i.e. it's marked deleted but SSA and Managers can still see the post.
I had forgotten that they are soft deleted such that SSA+ can see them, but this method leaves no notion to other users that a post has been deleted from the thread. However, the method of editing a post, e.g. "Edit: Removed" is equally (if not more) problematic due to it not retaining the original content of the post. A compromise would of course be best imo, something along the lines of "This post has been deleted" displayed to non SSA+ users. I can't really say I want to use runescape's forums as an example, but I think their method of simply showing "The contents of this message have been hidden" works rather well. Somehow, unless this is a readily available feature to xenforo, I think we'll be sticking to the current system regardless.
I think how SSA's and Managers view deleted messages should be what every registered members sees, as opposed to how it is now (zero indication). What I mean is, using Cactus' above post as an example (that most of you cannot see) every registered member should see this: Without the 'show' feature of course. They should simply see a small notification that Cactus made that post, he deleted it, and the reason why he deleted it. Only SSA's and Managers should be able to use the 'show' feature: It's possible that this is already a feature in Xenforo. If I had access to the control panel, I would take a look. If it is not, I'd imagine Dark will take a look and make a quick addon when he has some free time.
I feel embarrased now I know that the admins can see all the humiliating posts I hid because they were so bad and/or stupid.
(Just split this off from the clan forums). I don't particularly want to see marked deleted posts for non-admins. The idea of deleted posts is for them to be not visible. Otherwise you get posts looking like this: And then what about spam posts. Considering we can't hard delete posts unless you're Dark... There's my $0.02
