User blog comment:BertH/New Forums now available in Labs/@comment-188432-20121202033808/@comment-10370-20121204004951

When we first released Message Wall, only admins could remove messages, and all they could do was delete them permanently. We added the "remove/restore" functions because we got some really strong feedback that people didn't want to have to run to an admin every time they saw something that shouldn't be there. The remove function gives every contributor the power to clean up problems, and it uses the wiki's history/contributions so that everything is visible. We worked really closely with Community Support to make sure that everybody had the tools that they needed.

That seems weird and impossible to manage at first, but it seems to work out okay on wikis that have been using Message Wall and Forum so far. (At least, nobody's shown me any big problems with spam or mass-deletions for a long time.) People who don't know wikis think it's crazy and dangerous to have an "edit" button on every page. Once you get to know the system, you understand that it works out in the long-term.