Confirmed that it does auto promote regardless if the moderated post is deleted.
Seems like moderated posts need a queue area like a additional column field in the database before being added to the post count.
Or do not add the post count till approved.
I understand this may be to late to roll out for the upcoming 7.7.5 release.
But in my opinion it is a old issue that was never addressed.
I mean is not the purpose of moderated posts to stop inappropriate or spam posts so why should they be rewarded to count as a post to promote them..
This feature change request is still not addressed in the base package and is not on the short term roadmap for the stock package; we inherited a 20+ year old script and rewriting the entire core is a huge undertaking.
This individual requested change to the base functionality would be a large rewrite on how posts are increased and would need additional triggers at the time of approval as well as at the time of unapproval (where an approved post is marked as unapproved); it is not something that has been addressed or will be addressed in the near future (as we're currently working on modernizing the entire 20+ year old package).
At some point it'll be addressed (both Isaac and I agree that unapproved posts shouldn't increase the counter, and that posts that are unapproved [from being approved] should get a -1 post), but as you mentioned it has not been changed from the original behavior at this point. When it is changed you will see it in the changelog (we post complete changelogs for every release), you don't need to keep checking back in as we have the request already logged in the requests forum.
