It'll be great to have this on my forum.

While the idea for the hack is good, I think that Aaow AnD wHiTe might just want to consider disabling the option that allows users to delete their own posts, thus making it so that threads cannot be deleted by casual posters that are not mods or admins. They can edit away, but other people who may have replied will not have their posts lost into any kind of void, possibly having to be moved back if sent to a "Recycle Bin" forum.

yes this is perfect!

My users aren't allowed to delete their posts for the above reason.

Sometimes a moderator might delete an offensive post, but then we need to refer to it later to settle a dispute. If "deleting" threads actually just moved them to a recycle bin then it would be perfect. My mods carry on their job as they do now, but should anything crop up we can always drag the post out of the bin and ban people accordingly.

a few notes - no one should know about the recycle bin, it should all work transparently. You think something has been deleted, but it is still availbible somewhere.

Could this be done just using some template hacks?
idea:
Change the 'mod options' dropdown menu on posts so that delete actually moves, and has a specified forum number of the recycle bin forum. You'd need to prevent it from redirecting you to that recycle bin forum though, and send you back to the forum that you were moving it from.

Does this make sense to the vb-big-brains out there?

ok... so you want this to work like this.

1) when someone deletes a thread outside the bin area, it is moved to the bin area.

2) once in the bin area, it can be deleted.

right?

Yep, perfik!

And no one should be know or be told about a the bin - it should all behave like a normal deletion process. Urr, I just said that didn't I? :confused:

give me a few and I will have something.

Err... just create a new forum, call it Recycle Bin, and don't give your mods permission to delete threads. Then they'll move it to the Recycle Bin where Admins can delete it if they want to.

I put together a little thing for them... and I did suggest that in another thread... but people are just to lazy for that

Have fun