allow undeletion of posts for a short time after deletion

[lithiana]

Title
allow undeletion of posts for a short time after deletion

Short, concise description of the idea
after a post is deleted, there should be a period of time (say, 30 days) during which the post can be undeleted. after that time, the post should be purged, so that it can never be undeleted.

Full description of the ideasometimes, it would be nice

Comments

[licon]

I can see this being useful, but not for 30 days. 1 day should be enough for an "oops" deletion; any more than that and you should be able to get it from backups (in the case of a malicious deletion).

[azurelunatic]

I'd say 72 hours.

While I'm sure it is possible for developers to access backups and restore entries that have been deleted, historically this has been reserved for LiveJournal-side technical problems causing disappearing entries, not for account compromise situations. As horrible as it is to have an account compromise, I would not like to set a precedent of disturbing the developers and requiring a manual restoration for anything short of an LJ-side catastrophe.

[andy]

Yes, and implementing ability for the Abuse team to mark the journal in such a way that deleted entries are not purged when the time comes would be awesome.

[marta]

While I'm sure it is possible for developers to access backups and restore entries that have been deleted,

I don't think it's actually that possible. While under certain circumstances maybe some things could be found through a lot of work and pounding on things, I don't think it's actually really that possible in most situations.

ETA: sorry, still on first cup of coffee. I hope this makes sense.

[azurelunatic]

For community purposes, I think that allowing community members who are not maintainers or moderators to undelete would be unwise; if you want it back that much, ask them. They may of course deny your request, but that's how it goes.

[mordyn4]

+1

and +1 to 72 hours

otherwise, I think it's a good idea

[harrywells]

+1

[mlady_rebecca]

With this caveat, +1.

And I agree, a week or less is a much better time period.

[piekid]

+1

But for storage concerns, 3 days to a week is plenty of time to save a deleted post, IMO.

[elyssa]

I really like andy's idea of implementing a way for the Abuse Prevention Team to mark a journal so that deleted entries are maintained past an otherwise reasonably short deadline. It would make account compromise cases infinitely less heartbreaking for the user and for us.

[azurelunatic]

Yes. Particularly if there were a way to save the comments too.

[harrywells]

I plus one'd a comment above, but I just wanted to add a GOD YES to being able to undelete a post. I had a FO entry ages ago that had a lot of awesome comments on it (not all just asking to be added, but random stuff) and I went to delete all the content to start over on my post and I was updating another field and accidentally hit enter. Blank post being saved = deleted post.