Yesterday I posted something to /v/pics and it was removed by a moderator. I received an automated PM (reap what you sow, eh?) telling me kindly that my submission was removed. I was upset because I spent at least 5 minutes translating the Swedish text on the image I posted and I felt good about contributing interesting content. Having this thread removed for "not being a picture" felt like a slap. I was not mad at the moderator, he was just being objective and following "the rules" which by the way I find ridiculous as /v/pics is not a place where only photography should go as "pic" today is even a meme if you ask me. Instead, I was mad at myself for creating this system which can be very unwelcoming to newcomers. Majority of people who use Voat are lurkers, and imagine what happens if a lurker decided to post something, only to have it deleted by a moderator few minutes or even hours later. This user would likely never post again and may even stop coming back to Voat altogether. The experience really sucks (and I'm glad I had the opportunity to taste my own recipe) and I thought about what I could do to change it. /u/Puttitout had a good laugh about this, but when I thought about just how much it must suck for regular users when their submissions (contributions!) are removed, I really wanted to do something.

Here's what I'm thinking: how about we completely remove the "delete" button from submissions. Instead, I would implement a new button called "reject" or "bounce" or "move" or something like that, which would, instead of completely deleting a submission and burying it, simply move it to /v/whatever (which has no moderators) and leave it there. Original subverse mod removal log would still record this event and label it as "moved to /v/whatever" and OP would get a PM notification about the whole thing.

Moving to other subverses could also come later, but this would complicate things. If I posted something to /v/pics, and mod decided to move it to /v/dankmemes, mods of /v/dankmemes would have to accept the move, or else, we are opening the door to potential abuse. We would have to invest time and build a bunch of new things to accomplish this (pending move requests with notifications, schema changes, user interface elements etc). The moving process - from move request to could in the end take hours or days and I don't see this being very effective and user friendly.

So, what are your thoughts? Should we do this? Also, feel free to laugh at me. I deserved it :p

Edit: Thank you all for your thoughts on this matter. Removing delete button seems like an overkill, and most of you seem to agree with that. Spam would become an issue and dumping everything to /v/whatever could have a bad impact on that sub. I just registered /v/removed and I'll probably add a "reject" button next to "delete" button which would just move unwanted submissions to /v/removed while preserving all comments and stats. Once that is done, the user can delete/edit said submission or leave it in /v/removed. Making /v/removed a default could also be interesting. Anyways, I'll think about this some more and discuss it with @puttitout and hopefully we'll have something to roll out soon. Please keep the ideas coming and feel free to speak your mind even though someone else may have already said the same thing.

Edit 2: Saw -> Sow, thanks spamalek <3.