litphoria

Sometimes if a user or topic is getting out of hand it's going to be beneficial to be able to delete what they've said, particularly in the worst of scenarios. Channel owners or nominated moderators should be able to delete messages from their channel.

@Astarte, deleted messages are what is called "soft" deleted. That is, a field ticks over in the database, and the site knows to not display the message. However, the message still exists, and can be viewed if need be by me.

In that case, I'd like a channel mod be able to view the soft deletes within their channel as well if this is implemented that way they can most effectively control their channel in accordance with site policy, whatever that may be in the future.

What is the use case in a moderator seeing deleted messages?

A moderator who's able to see deleted content can delete first for damage control, then later take disciplinary actions, records, send messages and so on based on what was deleted. Without ability to see deleted messages we must operate from memory and that doesn't work very well.

If we have multiple moderators, it's very important to see what other moderators are deleting, so that we can understand what's going on as a matter of record. We can check and see the racial slurs the other moderator removed and we can trust that it happened and support their actions. We don't just have to take their word for it. "Well that other moderator said it happened" won't stand up against challenge from users. "I have it right here on record, you used racial slurs" will.

Lich summed it up.