22
votes
An export feature would be nice
It would be nice to be able to press a button which would create a zipped file for me to download all of my content on Tildes. Just one markdown file for each post or comment I ever wrote on Tildes.
Also delightfully GDPR-compliant!
I just looked, there's no account delete option either?
You can delete your account by sending a message or email to @deimos.
Well, I don't want to, of course, but it would be a nice thing to have automated.
There is a scale issue - at the scale that Tildes operates, it makes a lot more sense to have Deimos do the work manually than to spend time doing the work to automate it. Remember that automating it has a lot of auxiliary parts that you have to build as well, such as where to put it on the site, how to ensure it's purposefully done, whether to delete all the content, or keep comments but delete authorship, etc. Right now I'm pretty sure you can say "delete my account, but you can keep my comments for posterity" and that's fine, or you can say "delete everything I have ever said" and that also works.
From a coding (and Unix mantra) perspective: If you're going to do it more than once, automate/script it.
I know there is a list of priorities to work on when Deimos gets time or can be bothered.
This is one of those things thrown around as truisms that are simply not true. I get it, it seems so simple and delightfully true. But it really is not, certainly not when what we are talking about is not automation. I am sure that it is basically a bunch of queries Deimos has ready for this. So it effectively is automated enough from that perspective. What we are talking about is a user facing feature. Meaning it needs a sensible UI, be relatively robust, foolproof, etc.
Taking that into context, developing this entire feature could very well cost more time and effort than just doing the queries manually whenever someone sends a mail once in a blue moon.
This is a better version of what I meant to say in my response. Thanks.
You are welcome, automation can have a lot of benefits, but “automate all the things” can make things worse overall. It also is just generally very frustrating to see, certainly from IT professionals who should know better, and still manage to keep this XKCD very relevant to this day
From a coding perspective, it only makes sense to automate something if the time spent automating is made up for by the time saved by using the automated process. Only Deimos can judge, but I highly doubt enough people want to delete their Tildes account/content often enough for the amount of time spent doing to even remotely approach the time it would take to turn deleting one's account into a user-facing feature.
Sorry but absolutely not. There no really kind way to say this, but early optimization is a very noob thing to do. Sometimes the automation of something properly tastes more time than you will ever spend on just doing the task. The realization of that is important.
This is not something that requires automation at this point, because as I said, automating it responsibly will take more time than had been or likely will ever be spent on it this is a poor target for optimization, because it's very easy to do when you are an administrator with direct database access, but with a lot of edge cases for consideration that make automation not as simple as first it might seem.
You're right of course.
However, and I know this is going to sound crazy, but some people may not feel comfortable communicating in personal fashion with the owner a website to do stuff. I mean, there's a significant amount of things I didn't do because it would take me a personal message or a phone call to accomplish. And if a project requires me to get chummy with people on Discord, I'll probably take a second look to see if there isn't a viable alternative which does not require me to socialize with strangers.
I'm not saying programmers are forced to accommodate my neurosis, but that kind of consideration is relevant to some.
Absolutely.
I'm from a php/MySQL background. Writing functions to remove items from tables isn't difficult, including the choice to mop up or leave comments in situ.
I've never looked at the code for Tildes, but if you look at the code for this function in Wordpress, phpBB, and other such platforms, this is not something that will take long at all to implement, but maybe Tildes code is more obscure?
Over the past few years I've left the embedded coding scene, but it's always been the norm to implement all requirements on a project, then refine. Account removal seems like a standard function from the ground up.
I'm not here to argue, I just see this as a non-event. Peace out.
For what it's worth, there is an open (and accepted) issue for this from five years ago:
Option to export data from your account
I would like to see this too. Pages for data export and account deletion are on the list of things Tildes (the code) would need to become a viable Lemmy/Discourse alternative for other forums looking to set up their own website.
Just curious, why?
Well, I for one have written several blog posts' worth of content here and if I were gonna setup a blog it'd be nice to export to have a starting point.
The main reason is that I wish to keep all my previous writing concentrated in Org-Roam so I can easily and promptly make use of that content as either inspiration or a component of new things I am writing now. I put a lot of effort in some of my contributions, and I often find myself using the search bar in order to find a piece of the puzzle that is already done. Recreating previous observations is tedious and inefficient.
I agree, it would be great to be able to get a zip file of your own comments. I would guess that it has to be a batch job to avoid overloading the database.
Maybe you already know this, but the way I search my old Tildes comments is by going to my profile, clicking the "Comments" tag, and using that search box. It's a full-text search, unlike the main search. I can usually find a particular comment I'm looking for that way.
Oh yeah a batch job would be perfectly fine!
Yes I know about the search, thanks ;)