[patrickgordon]

There is a popular Ruby gem which addresses this sort of concern: https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia

Essentially it doesn't delete but gives the impression to the user that it deletes. I like this idea because it really does guard against mistakes.

I'm not sure if you have an ethical/moral concern with retaining data that a user thinks is deleted but that's another thing altogether (Personally, I don't.)