# Is my post invisible?



## Scherzando (Mar 27, 2009)

Hello Admins,

The other day I reported a spammer who had posted in the SOTW New Member Introductions forum. I did this by using the 'Report Post' function and posting a message in the Forum stating: 'Reported'.

Today when I logged back in and checked the forum, my post has been deleted and replaced with this:

"Scherzando
This message has been deleted by kcp.
Reason
Spam removed & Spammer banned - Thanks for reporting"

Fair dinkum, I nearly pooped myself! The message reads as if I was the spammer and it was my spamming post that was removed. I take it that this is an innovation of vBulletin 4.0.0?

So, I was wondering:

Is that message about the post being deleted by kcp viewable to everyone who is logged in, or only to the Admins and me?

If it's viewable to everyone, how about changing the wording of future messages to something like: "(User) has reported a post as spam, which has now been removed and the spammer banned. Thank you (user) for reporting the spammer".

Might save a few anxious moments.

If it's only viewable to the Admins and the Reporter, heck, I might just have some fun with it! :twisted:

Cheers,

Dennis


----------



## kcp (Feb 2, 2003)

Actually, Denis did report the post using the report post button and posted a message in the thread that says he reported the post. Whichever, to answer your questions:



Scherzando said:


> Fair dinkum, I nearly pooped myself! The message reads as if I was the spammer and it was my spamming post that was removed...


Well, I thought that was clear. Why would I be thanking you for spamming the forum? And how could you post here if you were banned? 



Scherzando said:


> I take it that this is an innovation of vBulletin 4.0.0?
> 
> So, I was wondering:
> 
> Is that message about the post being deleted by kcp viewable to everyone who is logged in, or only to the Admins and me?


That's called a soft deletion. Its purpose is to leave a message or reason for deletion (or in this instance, a "Thank you" note) in place of the deleted post to let you and everyone understand that there was a post in that place. It can somewhat be helpful to keep the coherence of a discussion.

Soft deletions are not new, they been around for quite some time and I use that function a lot. You probably just didn't notice before, since you don't get deleted often - And BTW, if you were a spammer, you would have gotten your post permanently deleted on top of getting yourself banned.

In this instance, I could have chosen to permanently delete your post and that would have been ok too, but I wanted to thank you for reporting the Spammer. We're sometimes very busy and don't always have the time to thank everyone that reports spam or other problems in the forum. A soft deletion is faster than sending a PM to thank someone.



Scherzando said:


> If it's viewable to everyone, how about changing the wording of future messages to something like: "(User) has reported a post as spam, which has now been removed and the spammer banned. Thank you (user) for reporting the spammer".


Not really. We're only allowed a restricted amount of caracters to type in deletions messages.


----------

