Originally Posted by
cepheid
That is why vBulletin has a "soft delete" functionality, which keeps a stub visible that says "deleted by <user>" while omitting all content. Soft-deleting a post would have exactly the same effect as editing the post to say "deleted," except that a soft-deleted post no longer counts towards the poster's post count and it looks better (it takes up less space on the screen).
Sounds like a great option.
Originally Posted by
cepheid
An additional benefit of soft-deletes is that mods can still see the original content of the post; this is not the case when the post is edited.
They can't?
One of the more recent changes around here I've noticed (within the last, say, 6 months or year) is that the "Last edited by" note underneath
my own edited posts is now hyperlinked. Clicking it reveals a MediaWiki-style diff screen (since MediaWiki is open-source, it's possible they just used that code) in which I can see the history of all of my edits. (I can't do the same for others' edits.)
I just assumed the moderators had access to that screen for everyone. If not, perhaps it's a good idea to enable that!