I'm looking for a way to make it so posts/threads that are deleted by moderators appear deleted to them and other forum users, but are actually moved to a special forum - "The Recycle Bin" if you will - which is invisible to all but admins. How would I do this?

That's actually a good idea, but kinda ruins the whole idea of mods.
I mean, they should help you, and doing what you want is basically taking the force from them.

You still have to go over the threads, so where's the point?

Maybe just full threads, I dunno.

This is allowing the mods to help, but its also allowing a security buffer. I will be opening my boards soon and some of the moderators will be mods of their hosted forums. If I have a mod go bezerk and delete his entire board - if he is kicked out of his clan, for example - then I would like to be able to restore the posts. I already have the moderator logging hack installed but this only allows me to see if a mod has gone nuts, and doesn't let me do anything about it.

Yeah well... I just think it would be a lot of work for the admins.

Anyway, my suggestion is setting a daily backup of the database. And I'm sure your host will have a backup too, so the last thing you need to worry about is your mods.

How can I do a daily backup of the database? And won't that take up a lot of space?

Umm, I don't know, I suggest you go to the server forum and ask there.

Not much hacking is really required. I thought about doing this a while ago myself.

All you do is create a forum called "Recycling Bin," and fix the settings so that only admins can enter. Then remove the delete option from the threads. That way, your mods can only move the threads, and there you have it.

But I don't want them to move the threads. I want them to be able to delete the threads just as normal, but when they do delete it it gets moved.

isn't there an option to delete a thread while moving it?

that's how it is in UBB. I just assumed vB's move function was similar. You click on move thread, and you can select if you want the thread deleted or closed on the forum you're moving from.

I don't know about that, but I don't think you understand what I want to do. Take the following series of events as an example:

A moderator sees a thread, and deletes it.
When they finish the delete process, instead of being deleted, the thread is moved to a "recycle bin" forum which is invisible to everyone but admins.
When the admin checks the moderator logs, if anything that shouldn't have been deleted was deleted, it can be restored.