Are You Soft on Your Deletes?

Frustrated with soft deletes in SQL, Reeditor writes:

In the past, I’ve added a deleted_at (datetime) column and appended “WHERE deleted_at IS NULL” to every query involving that table. But it’s a total pain in the ass, and it’s complicated as shit: there’s always a few queries that are missed, a few developers that forgot or didn’t know they had to check that the record wasn’t deleted, denormalized counts are hard to keep in sync, etc. etc. It always turns into an embarrassing fiasco rather than something you add once and then don’t have to worry about.

Good discussion followed which included a couple of interesting links: What is the best way to implement soft deletion? and The trouble with soft delete.

So, if there is a business need to retain deleted records, do you go soft or hard?