Factorio Forums

Here is my advice, based on experience modding other forums.

1. Normal users should not see any discussion about deleted posts. The whole point of deleting them is to hide them from users. I suggest you make the trash area visible to mods only.

2. The only point of keeping posts in a trash area is if you think a mod might make a mistake and delete a good post by accident. Then you can recover it from the trash area. Obvious spam should be deleted (and the poster banned if it's their first post) without leaving any record.

3. You should make regular backups of the forum database just in case a mod goes crazy and deletes everything. (The mod logins are sent over unecrypted http, eventually a mod will have their password stolen.)

DaveMcW wrote:2. The only point of keeping posts in a trash area is if you think a mod might make a mistake and delete a good post by accident. Then you can recover it from the trash area. Obvious spam should be deleted (and the poster banned if it's their first post) without leaving any record.

In my experience, the main reason is to keep a record of posts that had to be deleted, to help identify repeat offenders.