What is gained? History/audit trail. Suppose the deletion should ought not to have been done? A reap might well allow ready undoing, while a reap nuke is for keeps.

Update: fixed typo above

Most "nukings" can be undone. However, the "gain" is a record of why the node was deleted so that a determination can be made as to whether or not it should be undone. It also addresses issues like someone bookmarking a question and coming back to find that it disappeared. A reaping would likely leave a pointer to a better source of similar information, for example.

Also, a reaped node doesn't require more space than a nuked node. And the percentage is so incredibly tiny that it doesn't matter anyway.

I think the idea is fine. I doubt it will be done, however. Someone would need to implement filtering of reaped nodes from all of the several CatQ+A displays and then implement the reaping mechanism.

- tye        

I doubt it will be done, however.
Someone would need to ... implement the reaping mechanism.

Oh ye of little faith! ;-)

I've already demonstrated that much on the dev server. But not:

implement filtering of reaped nodes from all of the several CatQ+A displays

Would that really be necessary? Yes, it would look nicer; but on the other hand, it would be inconsistent with the other sections of the site, which display reaped root nodes, unfilterably.

We're building the house of the future together.