delete versus archive

We had a delete versus archive chat today. The consensus seemed to be that it was better to archive than delete. Why not delete a row from a database table? Well, who knows what was referencing it? Instead one may add an extra column, a bit for IsArchived, by which one may hide records away "forever," at each object. One downside is the extra column and the slight added complexity of queries. Another is lag that may occur just from having extra records in the database. One will have to craft all object queries to consider IsArchived.