Issue with recovering posts to un-deleted state when permanently deleting

zogstrip · March 23, 2026, 4:24pm

Thanks for the report This will be fixed by

github.com/discourse/discourse

FIX: Prevent failed permanent delete from recovering soft-deleted post (#38793)

main ← fix/permanently-delete-undoes-soft-delete

merged 06:35PM - 23 Mar 26 UTC

ZogStriP

+63 -17

When an admin soft-deletes a post then tries to permanently delete it before the… 5-minute timer expires, the server correctly returns a 403. However, the client-side error handler calls `undoDeleteState()` which clears `deleted_at` and restores the post to a non-deleted state in the UI — even though it remains deleted on the server. The admin then has to delete it again and wait another 5 minutes. This happens because `destroy()` always calls `setDeletedState()` before the AJAX request, overwriting `oldCooked` even when the post is already deleted. When the request fails, `undoDeleteState()` uses that stale `oldCooked` to revert the post to a non-deleted state. The fix skips `setDeletedState()` in `destroy()` when `force_destroy` is set (the post is already deleted), and makes `undoDeleteState()` accept opts so it can bail early for `force_destroy` — centralizing the guard instead of repeating it at each call site. https://meta.discourse.org/t/398938

Topic		Replies	Views
Permanently delete not functioning Bug permanently-delete	6	665	January 23, 2023
Permanent deletion bug Bug permanently-delete	17	1357	July 30, 2022
Final deletion does not work correctly Bug permanently-delete	6	635	November 21, 2023
Error during permanently deleting a post of a deleted user Support permanently-delete	3	83	September 23, 2024
Introducing permanently delete post functionality Announcements new-feature , permanently-delete	4	9223	January 22, 2024

Issue with recovering posts to un-deleted state when permanently deleting

Related topics