# Disabling deletion/withdrawl of posts?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [March 4, 2020, 5:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317 "2020-03-04T17:04:11Z")
**Posts on this page:** 16
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@1kevgriff](https://meta.discourse.org/u/1kevgriff)
#### Post date: [March 4, 2020, 5:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/1 "2020-03-04T17:04:11Z")
Hello all!
I’m working with a client who wants to prevent the deletion of posts after a time period. We have a grace period enabled for editing, and I had assumed that carried over to deletion as well.
My search of meta and of the settings isn’t turning anything up. Is there something I’m missing?
Thanks!
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 7:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/2 "2020-03-05T07:32:58Z")
Odd this is the first time I have heard this request, it does sound like a reasonable request to me, but given it is so rare I do not think it is going to find its way into the product for many years.
As it stands your 2 options are
1. Write a simple plugin that introduces this, would probably only be 10 lines of code. You can commission it on #Marketplace
2. Archive topics where you want to disable deletion. End users can not withdraw content from archived topics.
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### Author:  [@1kevgriff](https://meta.discourse.org/u/1kevgriff)
#### Post date: [March 5, 2020, 5:02pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/3 "2020-03-05T17:02:39Z")
Ha! I appreciate the response. I definitely agree it’s not worth the time if I’m the first to ask about it.
I’ll use this as an opportunity to try my hand at some Ruby dev and see if I can build the plugin myself.
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### Author:  [@angus](https://meta.discourse.org/u/angus)
#### Post date: [December 17, 2020, 7:10am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/5 "2020-12-17T07:10:17Z")
Would you be open to a PR for this? (wrapped in a site setting)
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 12:00am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/6 "2020-12-18T00:00:51Z")
I prefer @codinghorror weigh in first.
- Do we want a `delete time limit` (default to 1440 minutes) ?
- Do we want to add a `tl2 delete time limit` (default to 43200) ?
This would mirror `post edit time limit` and `tl2 post edit time limit`
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 6:13am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/7 "2020-12-18T06:13:46Z")
Can we take a step back here? What’s the goal? What problem are we solving, can you provide specific concrete examples?
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### Author:  [@sam](https://meta.discourse.org/u/sam)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 6:35am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/8 "2020-12-18T06:35:14Z")
I guess the argument is that somebody starts greefing by deleting 3 year old content they posted.
In practice I have not seen this, but I guess it could happen.
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### Author:  [@md-misko](https://meta.discourse.org/u/md-misko)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 10:34am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/9 "2020-12-18T10:34:02Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> In practice I have not seen this, but I guess it could happen.
This happened multiple times on our forum, usually when users are already disciplined by silencing or locking to TL0 (to prevent them from posting without review), so stricter setting for bulk deleting old posts would be appreciated.
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### Author:  [@1kevgriff](https://meta.discourse.org/u/1kevgriff)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 2:22pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/10 "2020-12-18T14:22:02Z")
Yeah, exactly. In our case, it’s within a day or two (granted, it’s a niche community, but deleting posts disrupts some of the conversations so my clients would like to disable that ability for non-admins).
A setting would be amazing.
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### Author:  [@riking](https://meta.discourse.org/u/riking)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 7:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/11 "2020-12-18T19:51:30Z")
> [@sam](#):
>
> In practice I have not seen this, but I guess it could happen.
I’m pretty sure our existing ratelimits on deletion have successfully stopped self-deletion rampages before they get too far - that was the original goal. However, there’s a really low chance that moderators actually notice the ones that did go through.
Perhaps a `review (self-)deletions older than minutes` setting could do this job? Note: Having an active Reviewable on the post will prevent the self-delete from completing.
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### Author:  [@1kevgriff](https://meta.discourse.org/u/1kevgriff)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 8:23pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/12 "2020-12-18T20:23:35Z")
Good point - `max_post_deletions_per_day` would be nice if I could set it to zero.
Our use-case isn’t rampant self-deletion, it’s single post/topic deletion after a period of time that is negative towards the community.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [December 18, 2020, 8:53pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/13 "2020-12-18T20:53:16Z")
> [@1kevgriff](#):
>
> Good point - `max_post_deletions_per_day` would be nice if I could set it to zero.
Yeah that’s the best solution here @sam .. I don’t really want more site settings for this.
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### Author:  [@1kevgriff](https://meta.discourse.org/u/1kevgriff)
#### Post date: [January 5, 2021, 2:14pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/14 "2021-01-05T14:14:47Z")
Hope everyone had a great holiday!
Is this as simple as changing the `min` on `max_post_deletions_per_day` and `max_post_deletions_per_minute` to zero in `site_settings.yml`? If so, I’m happy to do that PR myself.
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### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [January 6, 2021, 4:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/15 "2021-01-06T04:47:57Z")
> [@1kevgriff](#):
>
> Good point - `max_post_deletions_per_day` would be nice if I could set it to zero.
Yes, I believe @eviltrout has assigned this work so it should be in place soon.
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### Author:  [@Roman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Roman)
#### Post date: [January 7, 2021, 1:11pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/18 "2021-01-07T13:11:53Z")
I merged a PR to allow setting `max_post_deletions_per_day` to zero:
[https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/11645](https://github.com/discourse/discourse/pull/11645)
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### Author:  [@Roman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Roman)
#### Post date: [January 18, 2021, 11:24am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/disabling-deletion-withdrawl-of-posts/143317/19 "2021-01-18T11:24:10Z")