[REQUEST] Moderate opening post infractions without deleting the entire thread

While I appreciate many opening posts break ToS and need moderation, particularly with the increase in drive-by rage posting of late, much of the meta that follows in these threads includes useful discussion on the initial topic.

For example, this evening a rage post thread about DPS performance was deleted, during which several people made interesting points about adopting the Maat gate mechanic from XI to help players better learn their class, away from group instances. This kind of discussion is useful, and should really remain for development to see.

Could you please alter moderation methods to facilitate this? Perhaps simply changing the OP to an infraction message would do the trick?

Most forum moderation is just moving/hiding a thread from various viewing groups. So it's still there for mods/devs to see, but we, the general public cannot. Even if a forum has a 'delete' function, it actually just moves to a hidden forum until it's again deleted, or hits a time limit that auto-deletes them. =\

What may be an alternative is the option to vote on a new OP. Should someone's reply be inspiring enough to take the lead on the topic of the thread, this would be a better choice for new comers to the thread to understand what is being debated. :D