Remove "Deleted By...." from Discussions

[shane_ohara]

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

  Idea open for vote Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016  Learn more about voting...

Hello,

I would like to revisit the archived idea Option to Remove "This Entry Has Been Deleted" in Discussions and open this back up with this new idea, such that the "Deleted by ...." message does not display when a post is deleted by the teacher. Leaving these messages pose an unnecessary clutter to the display esp. when an instructor uses the Student View for testing, unknowingly posts to a discussion, and then needs to clean up their evil doings prior to course activity. Students have no need to see these messages. At a minimum, perhaps the idea can focus on a redesign of the Student View tool so that the reset functionality removes discussions as well....?

Comments from Instructure

For more information, please read through the Canvas Production Release Notes (2017-02-18) 

[amber_hainline]

I agree,  @shane_ohara . We use discussions as part of our staff meetings and staff PD, and I've used them in the classroom. The "deleted by" does clutter the feed and often moves content that is important to a new page. Not to mention, in the age of assumptions, having a "deleted by" in a discussion reply always leaves one to wonder why it was deleted in the first place. :smileyshocked:

[Renee_Carney]

Excellent!  Thank you for the resubmission.  Your idea will open for voting in January!

[cwendt]

Agreed! I'll bookmark this and return to vote!

[shane_ohara]

Thank you!

[biray]

This idea has moved to the next stage and will be open for voting among the Canvas Community, from Wed. January 6, 2016 - Wed. April 6, 2016.

Check out this doc for additional details about how the voting process works!

[buellj]

I like this idea. I'm thinking it could be useful for instructors and admins to see deleted by messages from students, but not have students see those. That way an instructor could reconstruct a sequence of events if the student later decided to delete a post.

[robert_wakelyn]

Would it be possible to remove it for the students, but still give the instructor the ability to see what was deleted?

[hollandr]

In my view, "delete" means "delete." When I delete a post, I want it to be gone forever, with no vestiges remaining. I do not want the "deleted by" message. At the very least, this should be a course-level setting ... such as "keep track of deleted posts in forums" with an on / off setting.

In my course, I made a "test" post, then deleted it, and now my notifications tell me that there is a post that needs to be graded, even though the forum is empty.

[hvaughn]

I agree that the "Deleted by" remnants do not need to remain in the discussion feed.  However, as an admin, I'd like to be able to see who has deleted a post (and when), especially if a student calls stating they know they made a post, but it no longer appears and they want to know why.This doesn't happen often, but sadly, in the past, we have had issues with instructors deleting student submissions and then saying the submission was never received.  The student panics and calls us for assistance. Whether the deletion is accidental or not, I'd like to know which account deleted the post.

[shane_ohara]

Yes, I agree to your comments of needing to see who/when posts were deleted. I think a toggle functionality to show/hide deleted posts would be the best solution for this feature idea....if we can garner enough votes.  -Shane