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0 pointspjerem2mo ago0 comments

> Users might say they want “delete”, but then also “undo”, and suddenly we’re talking about soft delete semantics.

I've worked for a company where some users managed very personal informations on behalf of other users, like, sometimes, very intimate data and I always fought product on soft deletion.

Users are adults, and when part of their job is being careful with the data _they_ manage and _they_ are legally responsible for, I don't feel like the software owes them anything else than a clear information about what is going to happen when they click on "CONFIRM DELETION".

"Archive" is a good pattern for those use cases. It's what have been used for decades for OS "Recycle Bin". Why not call it Delete if you really want to but in this case, bring a user facing "Recycle Bin" interface and be clear than anything x days old will be permanently deleted.

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indigo9452mo ago

Right, but I think that the Recycle Bin is exactly what is causing the issue here. Users have been taught for decades that if they delete something, it is not really gone, as they can always just go back to their Recycle Bin or Deleted Items folder and restore it. (I have worked with clients that used the Deleted Items folder in Outlook as an archive for certain conversations, and would regularly reference it.)

So users have been taught that the term "delete" means "move somewhere out of my sight". If you design a UI and make "delete" mean something completely different from what everyone already understands it to mean, the problem is you, not the user.

dpark2mo ago

> Users have been taught for decades that if they delete something, it is not really gone

There are stories all over the internet involving people who leave stuff in their recycle bin or deleted items and then are shocked when it eventually gets purged due to settings or disk space limits or antivirus activity or whatever.

Storing things you care about in the trash is stupid behavior and I hope most of these people learned their lessons after the one time. But recycle bin behavior is beneficial to a much larger set of people, because accidental deletion is common, especially for bulk actions. “Select all these blurry photos, Delete, Confirm, Oh, no! I accidentally deleted the last picture of my Grandma!”

Recycle bin behavior can also make deletion smoother because it allows a platform to skip the Confirm step since it’s reversible.

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