It’s really more like “Queued post withdrawn”… it only shows posts that were held for approval and then deleted before a moderator approved or rejected them. Moderators reject queued posts rather than deleting them, so those appear under “rejected.” That’s why this filter is easy to find empty. We could maybe rename it to “Queued post withdrawn”?
A post that was flagged and then deleted shows up under “approved” (or “Flag ignored” if it was deleted with “Delete and ignore”, or deleted by its author).
The review queue generally isn’t the place to find deleted content. /latest?status=deleted or /filter?q=status:deleted are the best way to see a general list of deleted topics. For a specific user, the best path is /u/username/deleted-posts, which staff can reach by clicking the deleted posts count at the top of a profile.
No, flagging isn’t involved. Deleted posts stay in the database as a soft delete so staff can view or restore them.
Hard deletion usually only happens when the can_permanently_delete setting is on and an admin takes the “Permanently delete” action on a soft-deleted post. There are other paths to this using the API or rails console.
A rejected queued post was never a real post to begin with, so its content is kept in the review queue record rather than appearing as a deleted post.