I guess I'm the only person that likes it the way it is now. I like the fact that when a post is deleted, the post count goes down.

Messages are only deleted on my board for one main reason: The user accidentally double-posted. When I see a double post, I delete one. It makes things look nicer. And I don't think someone should get positive credit for a mistake, even if a genuine, simple mistake.

Now we have a very progressive moderating attitude on my board. We will allow a lot of stuff to go by, as long as people are not attacking each other, etc. But when situations do come up, I prefer to edit or censor, rather than deleting the message. By editing the message, and putting an explanation in the edited message, the person who posted the offending message will see right away that what he did was not acceptable, and will have an explanation. This is preferable, in my opinion, that the person coming back and seeing his message missing, and not knowing what is going on.

So deleting a post is not normally done on my board, and only as a very last resort. So if something is deleted, it was because it was very, very bad, and once again, I do not feel someone should continue to get positive credit, to keep credit for that post, if it was so bad that it had to be deleted.

Now I have things set so nobody can delete their own messages or threads, so we do not have a situation of innocent people getting their counts lowered because someone deleted the first post.