Delete a message completely by an admin

[rajprakash00]

Admin can delete any message completely in zulip web but currently we
don't have that option in mobile version.

[gnprice]

Thanks! This would be a good feature to match from the webapp.

Probably the cleanest route toward implementing this will be through #3898. The logic to determine whether you're allowed to delete completely (and therefore we should show the UI for it) is pretty detailed, and it'll be a lot better to share it with the webapp than to duplicate it.

[gnprice]

Revisiting this: I think we can go ahead with this feature without blocking on #3898, i.e. on sharing the permissions logic from the webapp.

In particular, looking at what that logic says (get_deletability):

• If you're an admin, you have permission.
• Otherwise, if you didn't send the message, you don't have permission.
• Otherwise (so, you sent the message but you're not an admin), it gets complicated -- you might have permission, and might not.

I think we can round off that third point to assuming you have permission, and showing the option in the UI. It'll mean that you might get an error from the server, but that if you do have permission to delete the message then the mobile app will enable you to do so.

Then, as far as #3898 is concerned, deleting will be in the same situation as editing -- we'll sometimes be showing the option when it's not actually allowed, and it'd be a good further improvement to get the exact logic so that we can avoid disappointment.

[gnprice]

I guess to get the UX correct here, the natural sequence will be to do #5528 first, which makes some other changes to the "delete a message" experience.

So, marking this issue as blocked on #5528. But that issue is quite tractable, and is a "help wanted" issue. So for anyone interested in taking on this issue, please just start by doing that one 🙂

[nuke-web3]

This is a missing critical feature for moderation - while I don't expect spam and scams like are rampant on discord and telegram, I need the fastest possible way to stop that & delete junk. That is mobile for me, and I bet many others, to respond.

[gnprice]

Thanks @nuke-web3 for the feedback — that definitely makes sense.

Because this app is in maintenance mode, the place we'll ultimately add this feature is in the new Flutter-based app. I'll leave this issue open here to track this feature request. Later, around the time the new app is ready to launch and to replace this legacy app, we'll go through the open issues and migrate still-relevant issues like this one into the new app's tracker.

[nuke-web3]

Thanks for the reply - ⭐ ed that repo & will be trying out the beta! SO stoked for this!