It wasn't until I reached 10K rep that I realized when you delete a post, it really only hides it from the thread... Unless of course you are 10K+ or a moderator... Since the delete is not occurring, I think it would be interesting to consider changing the text to Hide. Undelete can become "Show"...
I'm guessing that there is no way that we can actually get the delete to delete, but that would by far be my preference.
Since a couple of the answers had a good point in them, maybe this question should be asked differently... Many are comfortable with SharePoint and we know that the deletion of content from there goes into a recycle bin that can be emptied. This whole thing would go away if a delete simply was a delete. If we follow the SharePoint concept, then I should be able to empty the recycle bin. If you can vote to delete a post which is a delete after the votes reaches the require limit, why not add a rule to the process that will do the delete if the owner requests it?
still can't comment, so I'll edit for now...
@diago: But the delete is not deleting anything. It also still shows it to others. So how is that something that is already not confusing to a user? I would also venture out on a limb and guess that a moderator undeleting a post that an owner deleted is not a good idea... So with that said, now that I know a post of mine that I deleted can be undeleted by a mod, then it definitely is not deleted!
@jonskeet: I like the metaphor of the recycle bin... Maybe I just need an option in my user profile to empty the darn thing from time to time? I also completely agree that trying to articulate what is happening would take up far too much real estate.
@random: actually embarrassing, I fixed it...
@random: jQuery file loads from the Google server is blocked by one of my companies filters, so anything on the SO sites (basically everything) that requires the jQuery files no longer works for me...