[wp-hackers] Data recovery (post_status?)

[David House]

On 12/02/06, Owen Winkler <ringmaster at midnightcircus.com> wrote:
> Yes, I read the Scott Adams thing, which had a bunch of good points.
> And yet through the whole thing I kept thinking, "Who chooses to
> 'delete' hundreds of comments (with the intention of keeping them!)
> without having tested a recovery plan?"
>
> I didn't see any trash can in WP, nor did I see the word "Trash", nor
> did I see any sign of anything vaguely like "Recover".  I'm not sure
> what implication I can take away from the word "Delete" other than that
> it will actually do what it says.

I really don't understand your point, Owen. You don't seem to have
mentioned _any_ reasons why we shouldn't include this recycle bin
concept.

You press Delete in your file manager. Is it a hopeless cause? No,
it's in the recycle bin (unless you use KDE, where 'Trash' means put
it in the trash can and 'Delete' means purge, but that's semantics).
You select some text in your text editor, and press Delete. Is it
gone? No, it's only a Ctrl+Z away.

Users screw up. Saying "you didn't have a recovery plan, tough." is
not going to win us any fans. Including a deleted_timestamp column is
completely trivial and should be done, simply becxause it makes life
safer for our users and there is very little possible loss indeed.
Personally I think gaving this column on the posts and comments table
is essential, and we should also include it on links and users as it'd
be useful occasionally.

> Ah...  I would prefer all of this recycle bin business to be an optional
> implementation.  If we set the appropriate enum fields to varchars like
> we had been discussing, and ensured that the appropriate hooks executed
> in the delete actions, anyone could implement this however they like via
> plugin.

No-one would install this plugin until after they'd accidentally
deleted their masterpiece. It's then no good. I see no real reason for
this not to be core.

--
-David House, dmhouse at gmail.com, http://xmouse.ithium.net