People should always be in control of their own content and free to change or delete it however they would like. This is both something I feel strongly about and a legal requirement, and it...
Exemplary
People should always be in control of their own content and free to change or delete it however they would like. This is both something I feel strongly about and a legal requirement, and it absolutely will not change.
Yes, GDPR requires it to be possible, and I think Canadian privacy law might as well (but I'm not totally sure about that offhand). So even if the site itself didn't have a built-in delete...
Yes, GDPR requires it to be possible, and I think Canadian privacy law might as well (but I'm not totally sure about that offhand). So even if the site itself didn't have a built-in delete functionality, I'd need to be able to delete any or all of a user's posts if they requested it. (@JakeTheDog)
Just curious - what is the legal requirement? I didn't realize there was one. But what about having edit history? I don't see how that is detrimental (and not beneficial to all) Lastly, is it then...
legal requirement
Just curious - what is the legal requirement? I didn't realize there was one.
But what about having edit history? I don't see how that is detrimental (and not beneficial to all)
Lastly, is it then a bug that I can see deleted threads via post histories, but otherwise not be able to find the thread through e.g. search?
If there's an edit history, then people can never remove anything from a comment without completely deleting the entire comment. Being able to see an edit history is almost never important or...
If there's an edit history, then people can never remove anything from a comment without completely deleting the entire comment. Being able to see an edit history is almost never important or beneficial anyway. I know you might want to see what the edits were, but you almost never need to.
You can't see the actual deleted posts in anyone's profile (or anywhere else, like you said), but you can see non-deleted comments inside deleted topics, yes.
So, now that you've deleted this post... ... do you know what the benefit is of allowing posts to be deleted by users? Is it just about hiding errors, as you suggested, or are there other benefits?
So, now that you've deleted this post...
... do you know what the benefit is of allowing posts to be deleted by users? Is it just about hiding errors, as you suggested, or are there other benefits?
I can think of three benefits to allowing comments to be individually edited or deleted. I've limited my engagement on hacker news as it does not allow you to edit or delete your comments. The...
I can think of three benefits to allowing comments to be individually edited or deleted.
I've limited my engagement on hacker news as it does not allow you to edit or delete your comments. The quality of the comments on hn feel to me like they have deteriorated recently, so it doesn't appear to be a long term method to elevating the level of anonymous discourse.
I periodically switch accounts every year or so. Which is very easy to do. Case in point, this account has only been active one day. By allowing comments to be deleted, folks are more likely to stay with the same account.
There was a user a year back who was overwhelmed with the attention she received from this site. She was very prolific, had some great content, but deleted her account and all her comments. Even though I was sad to see all that history being deleted, it was more important to her that she could delete her comments than it is for us to view complete historical posts.
As an aside, you can simply quote a user if you feel their comment should be preserved in posterity.
If you encounter an old reddit post that is illegible due to all the deleted comments, you can actually see the original comments just by replacing reddit.com with removeddit.com in the URL.
Oh, was that Kat? I've been wondering what happened to her, I haven't seen her account in ages, and it says it's been deleted now. That's a shame... :( was it just keeping up with the site or was...
There was a user a year back who was overwhelmed with the attention she received from this site. She was very prolific, had some great content, but deleted her account and all her comments. Even though I was sad to see all that history being deleted, it was more important to her that she could delete her comments than it is for us to view complete historical posts.
Oh, was that Kat? I've been wondering what happened to her, I haven't seen her account in ages, and it says it's been deleted now. That's a shame... :( was it just keeping up with the site or was there a specific incident or something?
Sometimes people delete their posts/comments because they just can't be bothered having that discussion any more. Leaving a post or comment visible means that someone will see it sometime and...
Especially in cases where the OP of a post/comment thread is a poor sport and instead of acknowledging their error, they remove all traces of their errors.
Sometimes people delete their posts/comments because they just can't be bothered having that discussion any more. Leaving a post or comment visible means that someone will see it sometime and possibly decide to reply to it again. If you've had enough of that discussion, the only way to be sure that someone won't resurrect it, is to delete it. It's not necessarily about hiding errors, it's about realising that you're wasting your time and deciding to cut your losses.
Of course, that doesn't stop people raising the issue in totally unrelated contexts. But it at least removes the primary discussion.
In addition to the reasons others have listed, it also allows users to clean up their own content easier and faster than moderators when there are reposts, typos, misunderstandings, etc.
In addition to the reasons others have listed, it also allows users to clean up their own content easier and faster than moderators when there are reposts, typos, misunderstandings, etc.
On the WELL, instead of deleting comments we would "scribble" them, which removes the contents but leaves metadata in place. This makes it easier to see what happened. (I suppose the username...
On the WELL, instead of deleting comments we would "scribble" them, which removes the contents but leaves metadata in place. This makes it easier to see what happened. (I suppose the username could be redacted as well.)
People should always be in control of their own content and free to change or delete it however they would like. This is both something I feel strongly about and a legal requirement, and it absolutely will not change.
Are you referring to GDPR?
Yes, GDPR requires it to be possible, and I think Canadian privacy law might as well (but I'm not totally sure about that offhand). So even if the site itself didn't have a built-in delete functionality, I'd need to be able to delete any or all of a user's posts if they requested it. (@JakeTheDog)
Just curious - what is the legal requirement? I didn't realize there was one.
But what about having edit history? I don't see how that is detrimental (and not beneficial to all)
Lastly, is it then a bug that I can see deleted threads via post histories, but otherwise not be able to find the thread through e.g. search?
If there's an edit history, then people can never remove anything from a comment without completely deleting the entire comment. Being able to see an edit history is almost never important or beneficial anyway. I know you might want to see what the edits were, but you almost never need to.
You can't see the actual deleted posts in anyone's profile (or anywhere else, like you said), but you can see non-deleted comments inside deleted topics, yes.
And..... he deleted the post.
So, now that you've deleted this post...
... do you know what the benefit is of allowing posts to be deleted by users? Is it just about hiding errors, as you suggested, or are there other benefits?
In my case - I (and potently others) benefit from the irony :)
We're only as anonymous as far as we take effort to be anonymous. It's easy to dox someone based on their post history if they don't take care.
Especially if someone doesn't have ability to delete identifying info they post.
I can think of three benefits to allowing comments to be individually edited or deleted.
I've limited my engagement on hacker news as it does not allow you to edit or delete your comments. The quality of the comments on hn feel to me like they have deteriorated recently, so it doesn't appear to be a long term method to elevating the level of anonymous discourse.
I periodically switch accounts every year or so. Which is very easy to do. Case in point, this account has only been active one day. By allowing comments to be deleted, folks are more likely to stay with the same account.
There was a user a year back who was overwhelmed with the attention she received from this site. She was very prolific, had some great content, but deleted her account and all her comments. Even though I was sad to see all that history being deleted, it was more important to her that she could delete her comments than it is for us to view complete historical posts.
As an aside, you can simply quote a user if you feel their comment should be preserved in posterity.
If you encounter an old reddit post that is illegible due to all the deleted comments, you can actually see the original comments just by replacing reddit.com with removeddit.com in the URL.
Oh, was that Kat? I've been wondering what happened to her, I haven't seen her account in ages, and it says it's been deleted now. That's a shame... :( was it just keeping up with the site or was there a specific incident or something?
there's some info on her blog
Sometimes people delete their posts/comments because they just can't be bothered having that discussion any more. Leaving a post or comment visible means that someone will see it sometime and possibly decide to reply to it again. If you've had enough of that discussion, the only way to be sure that someone won't resurrect it, is to delete it. It's not necessarily about hiding errors, it's about realising that you're wasting your time and deciding to cut your losses.
Of course, that doesn't stop people raising the issue in totally unrelated contexts. But it at least removes the primary discussion.
In addition to the reasons others have listed, it also allows users to clean up their own content easier and faster than moderators when there are reposts, typos, misunderstandings, etc.
Sure, but none of that is lost with edit history.
On the WELL, instead of deleting comments we would "scribble" them, which removes the contents but leaves metadata in place. This makes it easier to see what happened. (I suppose the username could be redacted as well.)