Yeah...this led me down a bit of a rabbit hole. I had initially written up a big post about how to restore a deleted comment, but then realized I was testing it out on an account that was a community moderator. So, trying again, here is what I found:
- Restoring a deleted comment as just a normal user (not a mod or admin) is currently not possible. This seems like an oversight and I think it should be a relatively easy fix.
- Restoring a comment as a mod/admin works as expected. You need to expand the deleted comment with the arrows and then select restore from the three dots menu.
- Purging a comment literally removes it from the database. This prevents it from ever being restored ever again as it basically doesn't exist from the server's perspective any longer.
I have created a codeberg issue for restoration of posts/replies.