Consider treating an edit of deleting all text a redaction

[turt2live]

ie: send a message, edit it, select all, delete, send. Should probably be a redaction

[aaronraimist]

Related: element-hq/element-meta#1335

[dbkr]

I'd prefer if we changed the presentation of a message that's been edited to be blank. A redaction is intended to be a very specific thing where the user actively needs to purge the message from as many places as possible, eg. because it leaks sensitive content or contains something illegal, although we don't really present it like this in the UI at the moment or offer an alternative. I think we should be trying to move towards redactions being a special and unusual case rather than doing redactions where the user didn't ask to.

[aaronraimist]

To me it seems like a user editing their message to blank means they didn't want to send that message and just didn't know that they were supposed to click the Remove button. It seems like the only reason a user would do that is because they intend for their message to not be seen anymore (which btw isn't what happens even with my PR due to https://github.com/vector-im/riot-web/issues/11978 still existing). Imo it is a fairly big privacy issue. Maybe there are examples of a user editing their message to blank and not intending for their message to be deleted but I can't think of any.

[dbkr]

I think the app should be as clear as possible about what operation has been performed, so the user can understand what has happened and use the app to achieve what they intend, rather than second-guessing the user's intentions. If a user does edit their message to be blank, I think it's better if they can then see that the history is still visible, so if they really want to try to remove the old message, they can then still choose to redact.

[nadonomy]

+1, basically echoed by my comment (with suggested comp) here:

matrix-org/matrix-react-sdk#4623 (comment)

[dkowis]

Is a "redaction" different than "Deleting a message"

In my case, I typed a message that was part of a longer message, and accidentally hit the enter key. So it's very much incomplete. I could just edit the message and have it updated, but it's still sitting there, partially completed, on everyone's screen.

I'd rather drop it, and start my message over again. I don't see the same "redacted" semantics as described by @dbkr . To me, it's just a message that I do want deleted, not for any of the mentioned reasons, but I want it gone. To me, it doesn't matter if it's "Redacted" or "Deleted" it doesn't contribute to the conversation, and is erroneous.