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) 

[crafte]

I agree to add a toggle function or enabling admins to see who deleted a discussion post. Another issue with the deleted message is the fact that it shows as a student having submitted something in SpeedGrader (orange mark next to the student's name) and the discussion post notification icon remains in the gradebook as well. This is confusing to instructors. A deleted post should remove any submission indicators once the deletion is complete.

[Beth_Young]

The "deleted by" information is critical for discussions that are set to require students to post their answers before they see anyone else's answers. Otherwise, students can just post whatever, look at everyone's answers, then delete the original post and repost for a grade.

It's true that students don't need to see it, but as an instructor, I want to see that posts have been deleted. No one needs to know when I have deleted a post, though.

[kmeeusen]

And I would love to see deleted replies fully deleted, with that very un-useful tag-line gone.

KLM

[jonwood]

Oh my god! Just YES! The ability for a teacher to remove these dead records would provide a professional look to the discussion boards. At the moment, they are kind of embarrassing.

[ccalderon]

It would be great to remove the display for students, but somehow keep the deleted information available for teachers and admins - thanks for posting this idea!

[lindalee]

There already exists the ability to prevent students from deleting their own discussion posts as a course-level setting. If this isn't set, then it's important for faculty to see the traces of such deletions, especially for graded discussions that require students to post first.

However, instructors should be able to determine when all traces of a discussion post should be removed from the learning management system. In addition to the test-post use cases mentioned previously, should a student drop a course, an instructor might want to remove all traces of their participation from a Canvas site.

[amberh]

I love the ability to toogle, giving the instructors the ability to hide this information away if they find it bothersome but still maintain the information in case an incident arises that requires an admin to view and provide this information. At first I was concerned with this feature idea, but as long as we can keep this information available to admins behind the scenes I can see it improving the user's interaction with the discussion board especially in larger courses.

As  @Beth_Young ​ stated, students shouldn't be able to have this same ability because they could then maneuver around the prerequisites of a discussion board or module and hide the evidence too easily from their instructors and T.A's.

[carmean]

Yes yes yes. I work hard on DB questions, and want to repurpose quarter to quarter. This would make life easier.

[loceffmichael]

I got here because I discovered this problem in my first week of teaching on canvas and was surprised such a behavior would have been unfixed.  Please get this type of "litter" off the screen.  Much appreciated.

[kdoak]

Agree! Teachers should have the option to remove this line -- especially for their own comments!