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.

The changes update the terminology from "Deleted" to "Flagged for Deletion" across the Network Admin interface to better communicate the actual status of deactivated sites.

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

I've pushed a few commits to this PR to clarify the terminology in additional places and in particular to increase the distinction between permanent deletion. The phrase "Delete Permanently" is already used in several places in core when the deletion cannot be reversed.

It was correctly pointed out in Core-17164 that from a technical point of view there is no distinction between archiving a site and deactivating a site. There is a distinction in the administrative workflow though, and this becomes more distinct with this change in terminology.

## Screenshots

Confirmation message when flagging a site for deletion:

Confirmation message when archiving a site:

[johnbillion]

I'm pretty happy with the state of ​https://github.com/WordPress/wordpress-develop/pull/8594 . @realloc @spacedmonkey @jorbin what do you think?

Testing steps:

• Visit the Network Admin -> Sites menu on a Multisite installation
• Use the "Flag for Deletion" and "Archive" options on different sites and verify the explanatory text on the confirmation screen makes sense

There are two related tickets:

• #17164 for the distinction between archiving a site and flagging it for deletion. This is less of an issue once this change goes in but would still be beneficial to revisit.
• #39158 for handling the fact that when a regular Administrator user requests to delete their site from Tools -> Delete Site, it's not possible to distinguish this from when a Super Admin does this from the Network Admin -> Sites menu.

[realloc]

Thanks for the ping, @johnbillion. I think the current state of the PR looks solid and is a good step forward. I also appreciate the effort to increase the distinction between deactivation and permanent deletion. It makes the overall admin workflow more transparent and easier to reason about.

The related tickets you mentioned are interesting as well. Some additional issues came up there that aren’t directly tied to this PR, but they might be worth revisiting in the future, such as accessibility concerns around colour contrast. Or the idea of unifying related actions across the user and network admin dashboards.

[johnbillion]

Documentation pages that need to be updated in time for 6.9.:

• ​https://developer.wordpress.org/advanced-administration/multisite/admin/

[johnbillion]

In 60358:

Networks and Sites: Correct and improve terminology relating to deactivated, deleted, and archived sites on a Multisite installation.

• Deleting a site is permanent action, so the terminology around site deletion has been updated to reflect that.
• Site deactivation has been renamed to "Flag for Deletion", and a site with this status is no longer incorrectly shown as "Deleted".
• Extra helper text has been added to the screen shown when changing a site's status to make the effects clearer to Super Admins.

Props kawauso, ryan_b, wonderboymusic, nacin, DrewAPicture, martythornley, SergeyBiryukov, jeremyfelt, ideag, jorbin, sukhendu2002, johnbillion, realloc.

Fixes #15801