Poor, Edmund W wrote:
Solution B: Create a "marked for deletion" function, with a timer. A standard period of time after being marked, say, 24 hours, the software automatically deletes it -- unless someone removes it from the deletion queue. (Variation: any edit to a "marked" article automatically clears the "delete me" flag.
Jimbo reacted:
I think that's pretty neat. I'd up it from 24 hours to 7 days, but other than that, I think it sounds grand.
(easy for me to say, of course, since I wrote none of the code)
I'm not so enthousiastic. On the one hand, those who want to save deletions are completely right if they say that 24 hours is too short. On the other hand, I don't want an entry like "Wut!" (which I just a few minutes ago deleted as the Wikipedia description of Hangzhou) to remain in the database for a full 7 days. I would very much prefer the other option - not letting the deletions be definitive, and having a definite delete only for copyright violations and extreme cases such as the goatse.cx case.
Alternatively - since the old versions appear to be saved at the system anyway, what about creating a 'restore' function on the Deletion log?
Andre Engels