Deleting comments

Hi
I have seen this in loomio manual:

"Deleting comments

You can delete your own comments by selecting the Delete comment option from the Comment options dropdown. Group coordinators can delete any comment in the group."

And as a group coordinator, I have removed a message posted by someone else.

I was wondering, has the loomio team spent some time thinking about the case of coordinators who remove messages they should not remove? And about a way of building trust of group members about traceability or about the neutrality of the medium (for example, the medium "air" is neutral because I'm certain that when I talk to you face to face, i'm certain that the sound which goes into your ears is exactly the sound I pronounced with my mouth). For example, seing history of modified messages (which is the case in loomio if I recall), and being able to tell wether or not someone removed a message in a discussion (for example seing something like "this message has been removed by its author/by a group coordinator" instead of nothing, or another example: removed messages go to a public space, a recycle bin section). Currently in loomio, when a message is removed, it seems that no-one can tell when they arrive on a discussion that a message has been removed, and to me it can cause trust problems.

Thanks in advance :)

OK I've found some previous discussions around this topic:
* https://www.loomio.org/d/H8XTRsv7/archiving-and-not-deleting
* https://www.loomio.org/d/Hf3UQm9W/notifications-for-deleting-discussions-comments-becoming-coordinator

Ideally we want this to be a group setting that coordinators can change. Groups are different and some want flexibility and have high trust, some don't and there isn't a single right answer.

Editing proposals and comments, and deleting stuff are both things that are right for some groups but not others.

Thanks for bringing this up. Hopefully at some point in the future we can support a setting for this, and provide a good default value for new groups.

See also the infamous comment editing debate. As @robertguthrie says, different groups have different circumstances, and the Loomio devs have to walk a fine line, designing the interface in a way that enables and encourages good process, without being too prescriptive.

@robertguthrie What exactly would be a group setting? The option of showing "this message has been deleted" in a discussion instead of nothing? But then, as group settings are not publicly visible, how as a user can I know in which situation the group is between not showing deleted messages and having no deleted message?

A formulation as a user story of the deontological problems I have with the current behaviour in loomio of not showing that a message has been deleted could be: "As an observer of a discussion, I need to know if the normal flow of discussion has been altered, and some details about these alterations, so that I can know that there is no evil hidden behaviour going on, and so have trust in the whole collective process". This does not necessarily imply to show "this message has been removed" in place of the deleted message instead of nothing, but this implies to be able by any way (including via a several-clicks away and hard to find menu) to get this information.

Sorry for the slow reply.

I was suggesting that the ability to delete your own comments would be a group setting that coordinators control.. in the past there has been a call for that.

Right now we actually delete comments when "deleting" them, which is maybe a bit extreme, perhaps marking them as 'trash' or 'archived' and maybe clearing the comment body.. then we could list deleted comments, somewhere.. in a discussion log available from the context menu?

Overall I like your idea of having some record of something existing and having been deleted. Thanks for sharing.