Add ability to keep a contact listed in the left pane even if the user deletes all messages in the conversation

[Cerberus0]

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates

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Bug description

Before issue #1133 was fixed, the left pane showed every single Signal contact that a user had and users complained because there was no way to remove certain Signal contacts that they never intended to communicate with from the left pane. Now they can remove those Signal contacts from their left pane by opening the conversation and selecting "Delete Messages".

An unforeseen consequence of this “fix” is that people who regularly delete the contents of their conversations now need to constantly use the search function to restart conversations with particular contacts. This issue was recently the topic of a discussion on the community forum: https://community.signalusers.org/t/why-would-the-signal-team-do-this-re-left-side-contacts-panel/2020

Possible solutions to this problem include reverting commit 32b66dd for all conversations and finding a better way to remove contacts from the left pane, or adding the ability to exclude certain contacts/conversations from this function, for example by implementing the ability to pin conversations to the left pane (#1860) and somehow reverting the effect of commit 32b66dd for only those particular conversations.

Steps to reproduce

1. Open a conversation
2. Select "Delete Messages" from the conversation's settings menu

Actual result: All messages are deleted from the conversation and the contact is removed from the left pane, requiring the user to use the search function to restart the conversation with that particular contact.

Expected result: All messages are deleted from the conversation and the contact remains in the left pane (either by default or because the conversation has been pinned).

Platform info

Signal version: 1.5.2

Operating System: N/A

Linked device version: N/A

Link to debug log

N/A

[Cerberus0]

I'm closing this as a duplicate of #1870