Something Nao and I are keen on doing is getting away from the current recycle bin. While it works, there are quite a few caveats to it, not least the fact that it wasn't even enabled by default. Though we did that, it's not elegant or nice, and it's something that would be better served by replacing it.
Now, the general approach that we're looking to adopt is actually to have the recycle bin folded into the normal view rather than this separate entity.
I'm posting this up here before any real implementation starts simply because it's quite high profile, as it were. This is more my take on how it should be done from a user perspective, the technical perspective is going to be pretty much the same whatever happens.
The first thing that occurs is how it should be shown on the page; I'm thinking that deleted replies would be shown one of two ways depending on the user and their preferences.
Normal users would just see a very short post, 'This post was deleted by its author / deleted by a moderator' (I think it should be quite clear which it was done by), and moderators/suitably privileged users would get that, plus a 'click here to see the full message' much as you do with users you're ignoring.
That way, even if a post is deleted, you're aware of it in the context of the thread, and it solves other problems such as if we ever implement threaded replies, it simplifies the logic about re-routing parents, not to mention leaving the conversation quite clearly structured and without so much disjoint attached to it.
The other matter is displayed deleted threads. I'm sensing we'd track whether a board had deleted threads or not, and have that as an option at the top of a board listing, whether to show deleted topics (assuming you're a moderator or similarly empowered user). The idea is that topics should be accessible but not immediately up in your face, at least not as visible as normal posts might be.
Does that make sense? Would it be worth providing mockups of how it might look?
Now, the general approach that we're looking to adopt is actually to have the recycle bin folded into the normal view rather than this separate entity.
I'm posting this up here before any real implementation starts simply because it's quite high profile, as it were. This is more my take on how it should be done from a user perspective, the technical perspective is going to be pretty much the same whatever happens.
The first thing that occurs is how it should be shown on the page; I'm thinking that deleted replies would be shown one of two ways depending on the user and their preferences.
Normal users would just see a very short post, 'This post was deleted by its author / deleted by a moderator' (I think it should be quite clear which it was done by), and moderators/suitably privileged users would get that, plus a 'click here to see the full message' much as you do with users you're ignoring.
That way, even if a post is deleted, you're aware of it in the context of the thread, and it solves other problems such as if we ever implement threaded replies, it simplifies the logic about re-routing parents, not to mention leaving the conversation quite clearly structured and without so much disjoint attached to it.
The other matter is displayed deleted threads. I'm sensing we'd track whether a board had deleted threads or not, and have that as an option at the top of a board listing, whether to show deleted topics (assuming you're a moderator or similarly empowered user). The idea is that topics should be accessible but not immediately up in your face, at least not as visible as normal posts might be.
Does that make sense? Would it be worth providing mockups of how it might look?