I think that’s a horrible and very non-obvious feature.
I respect your right to avoid commenting, but I will continue. I’ve always assumed that comments (including non-submitted “saved text”) could be retrieved and seen by admins, so I pretty much never write anything that would do serious permanent harm.
Oh, can they revert edits as well? If not, an edit to remove everything but “please don’t undelete this”, followed by deletion, might be a workaround. I hope they’ll fix this fairly quickly, though.
Admins should be able to see deleted comments and old versions as part of an investigation into harassment or banning. And I’d argue that edits on old comments and posts (say, after a month) are useless and harmful—it reduces the value of the site, and it’s archived in enough places as to not really be retrievable. Otherwise, people should be able to remove dumb or useless things they’ve said.
certainly. however, I expect my comments to be, for most practical purposes, gone from public observation. I trust the moderators, but do not trust all post authors, especially when a post is inflammatory, I post something inflammatory before thinking it through, and then rapidly delete it—it’s important to me that I be able to back out of a conversation like that before it’s had significant impact. I can be a bit pointlessly fiery, especially in the comments of the author who I quoted originally, and I rely on delete as a second pass in those situations.
I think that’s a horrible and very non-obvious feature.
I respect your right to avoid commenting, but I will continue. I’ve always assumed that comments (including non-submitted “saved text”) could be retrieved and seen by admins, so I pretty much never write anything that would do serious permanent harm.
Oh, can they revert edits as well? If not, an edit to remove everything but “please don’t undelete this”, followed by deletion, might be a workaround. I hope they’ll fix this fairly quickly, though.
Admins should be able to see deleted comments and old versions as part of an investigation into harassment or banning. And I’d argue that edits on old comments and posts (say, after a month) are useless and harmful—it reduces the value of the site, and it’s archived in enough places as to not really be retrievable. Otherwise, people should be able to remove dumb or useless things they’ve said.
certainly. however, I expect my comments to be, for most practical purposes, gone from public observation. I trust the moderators, but do not trust all post authors, especially when a post is inflammatory, I post something inflammatory before thinking it through, and then rapidly delete it—it’s important to me that I be able to back out of a conversation like that before it’s had significant impact. I can be a bit pointlessly fiery, especially in the comments of the author who I quoted originally, and I rely on delete as a second pass in those situations.