# How do I delete staff action logs?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687
**Category:** Support
**Created:** [October 12, 2022, 10:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687 "2022-10-12T10:31:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 10:31am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/1 "2022-10-12T10:31:43Z")
admin/logs/staff\_action\_logs
A list of actions of all admins appears, is there a way to delete this?
---
### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 10:42am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/2 "2022-10-12T10:42:38Z")
Not easily, no. That log is there to make sure staff don’t do things they shouldn’t.
If it was easy to edit or manipulate then it wouldn’t be of much value!
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 12:25pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/3 "2022-10-12T12:25:38Z")
But if an evil admin wanted to and had access to the rails console, they could find and destroy those records. Something like
```
StaffActions.where("i was being evil").destroy_all
```
But the evil admin would need to look at the source to see more precisely how to do that.
---
### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/4 "2022-10-12T13:32:04Z")
> [@Danielabc](#):
>
> /staff\_action\_logs
It’s just that there’s an administrator leaking information from my forum, I want to investigate, but no one knows about it, but the problem is that it will show everything in the log, so there is no way to delete it?
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### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:34pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/5 "2022-10-12T13:34:04Z")
It’s just that there’s an administrator leaking information from my forum, I want to investigate, but no one knows about it, but the problem is that it will show everything in the log, do i use this command in cmd?
---
### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/6 "2022-10-12T13:35:17Z")
If you can’t trust them, lock them out.
---
### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:39pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/7 "2022-10-12T13:39:47Z")
> [@Danielabc](#):
>
> an administrator leaking information from my forum
May I ask what kind of information?
---
### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:40pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/8 "2022-10-12T13:40:43Z")
The problem is that if I block everyone, they’ll make such a mess, and that’s what the person leaking information wants, they want chaos, they want me to remove everyone from the adm, the bad thing if I investigate is that everyone will be embarrassed to see that I scoured their profile and they started to treat me differently, if I had a way to clean the log, everything would be so easy
---
### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/9 "2022-10-12T13:49:42Z")
I have a news forum about country music. My forum competes with 2 others, in my country we are the 3 largest forums in the segment. My forum is the third in terms of access and audience, but it happens that when my team discovers exclusive information or something wants to do something about such a singer, the competing forum already knows and does it before ours! It’s someone from the admin group! But if I go through their profile, a lot of people will be offended! so I want to dig through and then just delete the log so nobody knows that I scoured it and that I’m investigating about it
---
### Author:  [@Karl\_Reza](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Karl_Reza)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 1:52pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/10 "2022-10-12T13:52:45Z")
Oooh, that’s interesting for sure. I’ll keep an eye on this thread ☺
---
### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 2:03pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/11 "2022-10-12T14:03:33Z")
What logs are you concerned about showing up? Only admins can see those logs, so I don’t understand the issue.
But if you want to poke around in the data without evidence of it, then just make a backup and restore it to another server.
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### Author:  [@Jagster](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Jagster)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 4:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/12 "2022-10-12T16:24:09Z")
I don’t know if you can find those kind of action from logs.
Now we are totally off topic but I would set a trap — do a separate honey pot to every admin and you will see who is leaking 😉
---
### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 11:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/13 "2022-10-12T23:27:54Z")
/admin/logs/staff\_action\_logs
If I enter an administrator’s profile, everyone will be able to see this in the LOG, and this will generate a lot of confusion on their part, because they are uncomfortable, find it unethical and still get angry for being suspicious! There is even adm wanting to go to another forum because he thinks that in mine he is being suspicious of something! It’s very complicated to deal with it! I just needed to delete this log! What you told me about restoring on another server I don’t know how to do… Is there a tutorial here?
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 11:31pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/14 "2022-10-12T23:31:08Z")
Who is everybody? Only other staff can see this. There shouldn’t be any expectation of privacy.
What if they’re leaking this information off-site?
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### Author:  [@danielabc](https://meta.discourse.org/u/danielabc)
#### Post date: [October 12, 2022, 11:41pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/15 "2022-10-12T23:41:25Z")
There are 20 people in the administration, all of them will see
Chaos will ensue if they know they are having their profiles searched
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### Author:  [@pfaffman](https://meta.discourse.org/u/pfaffman)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 12:47am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/16 "2022-10-13T00:47:06Z")
That’s literally why the feature exists..
But you could download the daily backup via ssh and restore it to another forum.
[Create download and restore a backup of your Discourse database](https://meta.discourse.org/t/create-download-and-restore-a-backup-of-your-discourse-database/122710)
---
### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 11:32am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/17 "2022-10-13T11:32:21Z")
> [@Danielabc](#):
>
> There are 20 people in the administration
I’m sorry about being off-topic (Am I?) but… Isn’t that, like, way too much for a forum, even a large one?
The more admins you have, the more the chances are that arguments with potential havoc can happen.
I fail to see how 20 people can envision the same goals and management on a single forum on which they have literally _all_ the rights.
The only persons at an upper level are the ones who have access to the server’s root access.
I understand your concerns and issue Daniela, but from my perspective, maybe reducing the number of administrators (by making them moderators, trust level 4 or regular users) would be a good idea to limit the risk of this kind of problem.
* * *
I’m aware that my reasoning may be wrong. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Stephen](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Stephen)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 5:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/18 "2022-10-13T17:32:20Z")
That is a pretty big number.
Looking at large communities it’s not uncommon to have 4-5 admins for 30-35k users and up to 15 with 5M+ users.
How big is this community?
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### Author:  [@not-ethan](https://meta.discourse.org/u/not-ethan)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 5:35pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/19 "2022-10-13T17:35:56Z")
What about here on meta? Or on the Roblox dev forum with like 30+ admins. Or are you only referring to forums run by communities and not by companies?
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### Author:  [@Canapin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Canapin)
#### Post date: [October 13, 2022, 7:27pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/how-do-i-delete-staff-action-logs/241687/20 "2022-10-13T19:27:57Z")
I’m sure a lot of factors can impact the number of admins (or the number of _needed_ admins).
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