What happens to deleted post?
Hi Jonah!
As mentioned earlier in this thread, posts are deleted by a number of causes; hence, a short answer to your question above is "it depends".
If you're asking about posts that have been explicitly removed by a moderator, then one of two things happens.
1) If the post contains information that may need to be accessed by a moderator in the future (eg: DexterOnline's post that contains profanity), then the post is not actually deleted; such a post remains in its thread, but it's no longer viewable by the general membership.
2) If the post is garbage (eg: duplicate posts) or the author has asked for it to be deleted, then eventually the removed post is permanently deleted through subsequent housekeeping tasks.
If you're asking about posts that have not been explicitly removed by a moderator, then nobody knows where they "went"; such posts appear to be forever lost. I'm confident that Ted would have mentioned a recycle bin by now, if there were one.
Posts are lost through flaws in the system software (like post-move fails). Posts are lost through malicious hackers (like ~6000 of my original posts, from a decade ago). Posts are lost through server crashes (like what happened to JeffM). Posts are lost through human error (I imagine that everyone has clicked the wrong stupid button at least once).
This is life, in the 21st century. :cool: