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Occasionally, regular deleting isn't good enough, and super-strength internet bleach needs to be applied to chat messages.

The process is this:

  1. A user requests a chat message be mod-removed
  2. I comply, and delete the message. I then access the message history, and purge it.
  3. Too late I remember! Having purged the history, the final state of the message from before it was deleted is preserved, and uneditable!
  4. Get higher-ups to clean up my mess

Thus, if you want to remove remove a message from chat you have to edit it to a placeholder, like "(deleted)", then purge the history. Forget step one, and the opposite of what you want happens: the message is public forever.

Given that this action is usually taken when a user has accidentally posted personally identifying or otherwise sensitive information in chat, this is a pretty bad thing to happen.

What I propose is that purging the history of a deleted message should leave the final state of the message as (deleted). The deleted information should not be retained.

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  • 2
    You can fake the POST request to edit it after it's been deleted, then purge, but most people don't want to do that.
    – Undo
    Mar 11, 2015 at 14:47
  • @Undo It still doesn't make the post editable after erroneously purging though.
    – fredley
    Mar 11, 2015 at 15:04
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    $.post('http://chat.stackexchange.com/messages/'+id, {text: 'nothing to see here', fkey: fkey().fkey}); It's called maaaaaagic.
    – ɥʇǝS
    Mar 7, 2016 at 22:39
  • 4
    I prefer UI buttons to magic.
    – fredley
    Mar 7, 2016 at 22:44

1 Answer 1

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I have added a button (using pretty much the script posted above by ɥʇǝS) to Porkchat, users of the extension can now edit messages from the history page.

enter image description here

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