Allow more precise Delete Removed Posts After timeframes

feature
1

Could the site allow admins to set the delete removed posts after setting to fractions of an hour, to allow users to restore deleted posts for up to 30 seconds, for example?

A user’s just been working through the advanced Discobot tutorial on our site and ran into an issue with post deletion. One of the steps requires the user to delete a post and then undo that action. We have the delete removed posts after setting set to 0 (posts are deleted immediately) so they had to find a workaround to complete this step.

I’d like users to be able to delete their posts permanently almost instantly (so that they’re not visible to other users) but to handle this scenario, I’d hoped to set the undo grace period to 30 seconds, which would also help if they deleted their post accidentally.

I tried entering 0.0085 (30 seconds, as a fraction of an hour) but it looks like the setting rounds any figures entered down to the nearest whole number. That means I can’t even set the grace period to 0.083 or 5 minutes.

2 Likes
2

This is not a healthy practice. Why allow immediate delete, it is kind of dangerous to do so.

2 Likes
3

The reason we’ve got it set up that way is that we’ve set edit histories as publicly visible. So if we have a grace period then even if someone deletes their post, others will still be able to see the post that they’ve deleted.

If there’s another way to prevent others from seeing those deleted posts without having immediate deletion switched on, I’d be happy to use it.

4

That’s intentional. It’s a protection against “post-troll-then-delete-and-play-innocent”

2 Likes
5

That type of behaviour isn’t an issue for us, we’ll intervene if users do this. Staff can still see the deleted posts even if immediate deletion’s enabled.