There is a little button at the right side of the post that says “ban”. I have clicked on it. I always understood “ban” to apply only to users, with posts being “deleted” or “removed”, but you sound like you have convincing evidence otherwise.
If you refresh the page where you banned a post, you’ll also see ‘Unban’ button (possibly with different status of different posts/comments on the user page). Moderators only ban individual comments and posts, which causes them to become invisible to regular users and disappear from the indexes. The deletion mechanism is separate.
There is a little button at the right side of the post that says “ban”. I have clicked on it. I always understood “ban” to apply only to users, with posts being “deleted” or “removed”, but you sound like you have convincing evidence otherwise.
If you refresh the page where you banned a post, you’ll also see ‘Unban’ button (possibly with different status of different posts/comments on the user page). Moderators only ban individual comments and posts, which causes them to become invisible to regular users and disappear from the indexes. The deletion mechanism is separate.