Wedge

Like I said you did cover it ;)

Though it's practical to use the report function we actually (maybe I should say I) don;t like the moderation center much. Heck I was one of the ones hoping to get a moderation board mod or something of the sort instead. For us hitting the unapprove button and making a quick post on our moderator discussion board seemed like second nature.

Soft delete could work also though I'm not much a fan of in-line delete.
In it's current existence in SMF deleting the topic/post isn't practical, so I'd be curious to see how it all plays out.

What's the difference?

Essentially inline delete is a prettier version of what I did with SimpleDesk: the post is left in place in the topic, so pagination and post numbers are left the hell alone, just for everyone there's a very short 'This was deleted by a moderator' type notice, as other systems have. There's a reason they have it - it's a ton more elegant than what SMF does, even if what SMF does is probably a touch more efficient. (But only a touch, with a little imagination it doesn't have to be any slower than what we have now)

Remember that I'm effectively saying that the recycle board is hard-wired on and cannot be removed with the in-line delete idea.

No difference... I agree using soft delete can work but also stating i don't like the whole idea of seeing a deleted post in a topic.  When we unapprove a post a decision is usually reached to either re-approve it or be off the the recycle bin. so what I dislike about in-line delete is that if we decide the post was unacceptable it remains right there in the post just invisible or hidden t those without proper permission to view it. I much rather be off to the designated trash with it (whatever direction that takes in wedge).

OK, let's say hypothetically, that soft-delete hides the post into a single barely-one-line-high message in place of the actual content, simply to say 'This post was deleted by a moderator', and that for those who can see it, there's an additional link 'To view this message, click here'.

We're only consuming a small amount of space on the screen but we're providing context.

For example, consider the following thread:

Post 1: <says something interesting>
Post 2: <blatant insult>
Post 3: The post above me is rubbish.

Now delete post 2. In the classic context you're left with:

Post 1: <says something interesting>
Post 3: The post above me is rubbish.

Which artificially distorts the meaning behind it, though unintentionally. Perhaps there's education that Post 3's author should be more specific, but whatever, it's caused more than one row that I've seen on sm.org, let alone elsewhere.

Under what I'm suggesting you'd have:

Post 1: <says something interesting>
 -- this post has been deleted by a moderator --
Post 3: The post above me is rubbish.

Now, no context is lost. It's quite clear to everyone who can see the thread what happened. No misunderstanding is made based on anything.

If you really did want to delete it, there should be a permadelete option but in almost every case I've encountered, moderators can all only soft-delete and only admins can permadelete, so in most cases nothing changes.

The only counter argument that remains as I see it is the fact you have a potential case of 'soft-soft-delete', for which you can then manufacture an argument of 'but I need a soft-soft-soft-delete' ad nauseum. I'm not convinced there needs to be an extra state, nor am I yet convinced that the ability to unapprove a post is required.

If you want to take it out of circulation, soft-delete it, that's what it's there for. You can put it back later if you need to, or you can spirit it away with the caveats of lost context above, but it should be more obvious in this situation.

I do get your point fully.I'm all for soft delete, by definition not permanently gone and having the option to restore.
I always hated the way this was handled in vb, especially when more than just 2 or 3 posts are removed.

I think it was discussed before that there could be a user option as to whether to display those inline deletes or not, I can live with that if it applies to admin as well :P

All in all I can get use to the inline soft delete though.

Inline delete all the way. If I really had to "save" deleted stuff and inline bothered me I would just split them out and put em in a hidden/private board.