Brent Turner asked on the forum for a way to use workflow to approve the item deletion. The idea is that when an editor deletes an "important" item, the item doesn't go right into the recycle bin. Instead the decision must be approved using Sitecore workflow.

The idea got Alex, Kim and me interested, we exchanged a number of emails and Alex had a nice entry on the topic.

Actually approved decision is the easiest part: place item in workflow when the user clicks delete button and delete the item once it gets to the right state.

If the deletion is denied, however, it'd getter be back in it's original state, whatever that was before someone decided to delete the item. And while the item is pending for a deletion, editors should see a warning - no sense in modifying the item that might be deleted tomorrow. And then if you consider multiple languages.. There's all sorts of interesting details and somehow I'm sure I didn't get everything right.

As an experiment, I did a screen cast to show how it works. Take a look (SDN5 access required):