Preserve discussion on deleted posts

Would it be possible to keep or archive the discussion on deleted posts? Sometimes a post may generate good discussion but later have the artist added to DNP, and it doesn’t seem like the best idea to have all the comments vanish as well. It may also be a good idea to lock the comments when the OP is deleted so the archive isn’t spammed with variants of “fuck you, artist, for being DNP”, but perhaps that should be at site mod discretion (as to whether there is an active conversation that doesn’t need a lock vs. last comment was 5 years ago and locking comments is really the best way forward.
 
Somewhat related, is there a way to view the list of tags from the deletion notification if you’re not on a desktop browser (or using an environment where you can’t mouse over the image placeholder to view the tags)? A use case would be to view the tags to guess about the deleted image so you know not to upload it again.

good idea. I am kinda annoyed by seeing a notification for “takedown request” on so many posts. I am very curious as to why/how they were deleted in the first place! especially if it is the artist’s decision

@leash  
Takedowns almost never have anything to do with the discussion on the image. The vast majority of takedowns are because artists are rebranding.

@Derpy Whooves  
…as in the artist pretending they didn’t have a shameful pony-filled past?

@PUBLIQclopAccountant  
As in the artist trying to move from college to the professional world and they are updating their online presence and creating a professional portfolio that only shows the work they want seen and considered when they interview.
 
And other times it’s artists who haven’t done anything in this fandom for a couple years but they’re still getting asked about making images, and other times artists are still getting angry PMs from people about images they drew 4 years ago, or they have such a radically different style now after half a decade of drawing that they don’t want their original stuff showing up under their current name … people have lots of reasons they do or don’t want to be associated with their old work.
 
Sometimes it’s because there’s two OCs in the image that represent people who broke up, and they can’t stand to know that there’s an image out there with both of them in it …
 
Lots of reasons.
 
But almost never because of the discussion on the image. Those usually just get reported as “What the fuck is up with these comments”, and then we deal with the off-topic comments.

I guess I’m more disappointed that the cultural norm of artists burning their juvenalia is still active in the online age instead of merely asking for the artist tag metadata to be removed. For that matter, a lot of musicians would burn their drafts and unfinished works. That’s where the truism of “if you see something you really like, save it to your own computer” comes from.

@PUBLIQclopAccountant  
Humans are humans. The internet has only really existed since the 90’s, and it’s been less than a generation since the days when people had to have a phone book that listed the store that had the thing, or knew where a store physically was, if they wanted to buy something. It takes a little longer than that for mindsets about stuff like having and not-having to really change.

I fully endorse this, because this is my biggest contention with the DNP policy above all else. It’s the reason I archive not just the pictures, because the discussions underneath them are a good snapshot of fandom thoughts and feelings at the time of original posting; and means that people in the future can’t pretend that things weren’t as good/bad as they remember them.