Network Admin: Deactivated / Deleted inconsistency

[kawauso]

Under the Sites screen, there are distinct inline links for Deactivate and Delete. However, when a site is deactivated, it is referred to as deleted in:

• Sites screen inline status

• Edit Site screen attributes section

• Error page for non-admins visiting the site

[kawauso]

Leaving severity alone

[ryan_b]

From what I can tell, the delete link removes the site from the db, deactivate leaves it in the db and sets a flag called "deleted", so my question is if the flag is called deleted is the status being listed as "Deleted" the desired effect?

[scribu]

Related: #17164

[wonderboymusic]

Deactivated is the status for the Delete flag, Delete is an action that removes the site. Patched.

[nacin]

There's a lot of inconsistency here. Moving out of 3.5 for further review.

[DrewAPicture]

deactivated.diff​ looks good to me. It's a shame the flag is called 'deleted' but I'd assume changing it isn't an option.

[martythornley]

It seems there is still an inconsistency in that from a user's POV, they go through the process of saying to 'delete' their site, which is why it now shows up as 'deleted' but from the super admin POV it is really deactivated.

So... we could either change the "delete" link from the Super Admin level and rename it to "remove" or "permanently delete", then change the "deactivate" link back to "delete". This would make user and super admin "delete" functions act the same. "Delete" would mean temporary, like moving to the trash. While "Remove" or "Permanently Delete" would remove it altogether.

[SergeyBiryukov]

"easy-fix" is a tag for attracting new contributors to tickets that don't have a patch yet.

See the IRC discussion: ​part 1, ​part 2.

[martythornley]

I played with some of the wording in those links and some seem to work better than others.

It seems from the user level, they go through the delete site process and to them the site is gone. But really to the Super Admin it is "marked for deletion" which seems an even better label to me than "deactivated".

As a Super Admin, when we deactivate and reactivate a site, it is like trash/untrash or again, marking for possible deletion.

Once sites are "marked for deletion" or in the trash, we can use the "Delete" link to do it permanently.

Changing the wording of the links makes the super admin process make more sense, but it starts messing with the flags and would be inconsistent when looking at the code.

However, the get_blog_status and update_blog_status are only called a couple times in core and it would seem to not too difficult to run a quick update that says if the blog status is called 'deleted' update that to 'trash'. Or whatever the decided wording is. Or am I missing other areas that rely on those flags?

Another, farther reaching idea...

Could we somehow change the blog status to an array that can be whatever we want? That way a blog could be multiple things at once - A blog could be 'Mature', "Spam', and 'Trash" all at once? Or any number of custom status that a plugin might build like "Awesome", "Promoted", etc...

[jeremyfelt]

The behavior makes sense in that a user (not a superadmin) is flagging or marking their site for deletion, not deleting it directly. If the language to the user was updated to better convey this, that might be all that is needed.

The post delete screen of Your site will not be deleted until this link is clicked. could become Your site will not be flagged for deletion until this link is clicked.

An explanation about the network administrator having to complete the process could be added to the delete email.

The text for a non logged-in user *could* stay the same - This user has elected to delete their account and the content is no longer available. or could be changed to This site has been marked for deletion and the content is no longer available. It is the site being deleted, not necessarily the user's account.

And finally, the Deleted marker in the network admin's list table could be left alone or something else could be done to convey that further action is needed to satisfy the user's wishes.

@nacin - do you have thoughts on approach with this? Not sure if it really is something we can squeeze into 3.8.

[nacin]

@nacin - do you have thoughts on approach with this? Not sure if it really is something we can squeeze into 3.8.

Not really. Let's play a long game here. What's the best approach? Let's figure it out and do it, versus trying to squeeze things into a release over a confusing label.

[jeremyfelt]

#29459 was marked as a duplicate.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#44974 was marked as a duplicate.

[SergeyBiryukov]

#47275 was marked as a duplicate.

[sebastienserre]

Hello,

This ticket seems to be abandoned... but I think there's a really problem with this "deleted label" io a "deactivated" one.

I'm quiet new in Core contribution so, I d'on't know exactly what to do to make this ticket closed :-/

This PR changes some of the strings, to consistently refer to sites in multisite as 'Deactivated' when they are marked as such. Previously there were cases where they were being called as 'Deleted', while there is a separate action to 'Delete' a site which actually fully removes the site from the system.

EDIT: Trac ticket: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/15801

[jorbin]

#56076 was marked as a duplicate.

[ideag]

#44515 was marked as a duplicate.

[jorbin]

Looking at @jeremyfelt's comment, I think we should also fix up the other strings as a part of this so that everything is clear and we may need to add some additional code so that a site is considered flagged for deletion along with it being deactivated. That will help super admins know that a user requested the site be deleted vs that they deactivated it.

[sabernhardt]

#61142 was marked as a duplicate.