Occasionally, regular deleting isn't good enough, and super-strength internet bleach needs to be applied to chat messages.
The process is this:
- A user requests a chat message be mod-removed
- I comply, and delete the message. I then access the message history, and purge it.
- Too late I remember! Having purged the history, the final state of the message from before it was deleted is preserved, and uneditable!
- 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.
$.post('http://chat.stackexchange.com/messages/'+id, {text: 'nothing to see here', fkey: fkey().fkey});
It's called maaaaaagic.