[IDEA] Change the behaviour of 'Soft delete' on the opening post of a thread.

figment_uk

Far too many times recently I've opened a thread in Help & Support and scratch my head trying to work out what all the replies relate to because the member creating the thread has soft deleted the opening post.

Therefore, I would like to propose one of two options (if either is possible):

Disable soft delete on the opening post of a thread; or
Modify the behaviour so that soft deleting the opening post of a thread soft deletes the entire thread.

kathleen414

figment_uk
Good point and also another issue is threads that have been moved out of another members post and as such don't make sense and it starts with a helpers reply to the poster but with no question

dtuxcomp

figment_uk That's a great point, I find the soft-delete is a fantastic tool, especially when first drafting threads so you can start it then immediately soft-delete the whole thread so you can concentrate on editing without dealing with other posts, I also leave a couple of soft-deleted posts at the top of some of my threads so I can go back and add more posts under the OP without crowding out the OP itself, but as you say, if the OP alone vanishes it can leave the whole thread lost 🙂

harrrrrry

figment_uk

I'm not sure what to say on this -- apart from that soft delete does not actually delete anything, only hides it,

Imagine there could be a thousand posts in a thread, and a hundred regular participants. Is it right that one person should be able to hide the discussions of the other 99, without even asking them?

But it does perhaps make sense if the thread is hidden very soon after creating it. Maybe, within the first 10 minutes -- if the OP discovers there's something ambiguous with the post, That would allow them to correct the error before the thread has a chance to go completely off topic or be misunderstood.

jaymailsays

figment_uk

Disable soft delete on
the opening post of a
thread;

Occasionally on mobile, it is far too easy to accidentally soft delete a post and for newbies, less obvious on how to reinstate that post. Or it could be that they wanted to quickly hide personal information, unintentionally posted.

figment_uk or

Modify the behaviour so
that soft deleting the
opening post of a
thread soft deletes the
entire thread.

As things stand Eds seem reluctant to delete a thread with a soft deleted OP. Whether this is due to the historic 'Audit' ethic that was once quoted, I am not sure about.
The current procedure seems to be that the Ed will contact the OP and ask whether they want the status of the OP altered.
The difficulty is the OP may simply ignore or be unaware of the DM.

One change that is needed, certainly in Help, is the thread title should include the OP's Avatar, with the ability to click on their profile, whether the OP had been soft deleted or not.
For example, Title says:-
@ How Do I Find My Number?

In reply we can say:-
Hi @ you can view your giffgaff mobile number ⬇️
https://www.giffgaff.com/dashboard

At the moment a soft deleted OP is anonymous. Under my suggestion it wouldn't be by reference to the Title..

shabazmoqsud

figment_uk agreed very good points.

this discussion is case in point

https://community.giffgaff.com/d/33121666-goodybags

i was checking it wanted to see all the posts including OP post but its not there

unicorntales

figment_uk
Sorry if I'm sounding stupid here but what is a "soft" delete?

rqt

figment_uk
What about having a notice that says "this post has been deleted" ? - the thread would still not make sense but you would know not to bother trying to work it all out.

pmaine

figment_uk sounds good to me

garybo

figment_uk that's a great idea

pw6049

figment_uk it's a yes from me

peterhall0012

figment_uk I would say yes to this

isabel1066

figment_uk this seems a good idea to me

allan1954

figment_uk that would be good as we are not mind readers

endorphin

harrrrrry Is it right that one person should be able to hide the discussions of the other 99, without even asking them?

I think the main impact of this would be under the Help tag. If the OP has soft deleted their opening post then all the following replies just don't make any sense or at the very least irrelevant, and/or confusing.

I'm torn though as to which option is the best, probably 1 at a pinch.

dtuxcomp

unicorntales Not at all hon, you missed all the change over to the new platform 🙂

Basically once you've started a thread or made a post, you can go back and "soft-delete" it, if you had ever hit post on the old platform then wanted to delete the whole post, you'll have found there wasn't a way of doing it, you had to edit the post and erase all the text then post a blank message.

This is a much better feature, you can "soft-delete" it instead, that means it's not visible to any other members, this has the advantage that you can "un-soft-delete" if you want to put it back, it's actually called restore I think, but that sounds better to me 🙂

I hope that makes some sense of it but let me know if I can help you make more sense of it 🙂

unicorntales

dtuxcomp Right! I understand. Thank you for explaining 😊

dtuxcomp

unicorntales No worries, I'm amazed it made sense 🙂 How you do it depends on if you are using the app, or a PC.

harrrrrry

rqt a notice that says "this post has been deleted" ?

There are two good benefits to doing that:

overall, it's probably better than deleting the thread altogether, especially if there are links to the thread
if it behaves exactly like a real message, it's going to be a lot easier to implement than fixing the hostile Jump to First Unread bug that causes unwamted redisplay of messages that have already been read.

So, yes, a very good idea on both counts.

But I'd suggest the wording should be more like "this member has hidden the post" to make it clear that it was the member's choice rather than censorship