Personal Development for Smart People Forums - View Single Post - Feedback request: deleting old threads by visitor request?

Matthew Shea · 08-10-2007, 08:08 PM

Overall, I'd say personal responsibility should be the rule of the day, as most others have suggested. I've posted a lot of personal stuff myself, but I always think it through and have yet to regret anything I've put online. We all make mistakes, but 24 hours should be plenty of time to re-think something and edit it. More than that and too many threads would get ruined when the OP had second thoughts and deleted the first post. Some other forums I'm on have as little as 60 minutes of edit time. If someone has an intensely personal topic they need advice on, I'd say it would be wise to contact the mods via PM first for advice on how to post the information in a way they won't regret later.

For the issue of people requesting mass deletion of posts, I'd say it should be policy to turn them down outright. That's simply irresponsible on the poster's part and it shouldn't be the forum owner's responsibility to cater to their carelessness. Deletion requests should identify a reasonable (read: small) number of specific posts.

I also like the idea of altering a post's ownership. I've seen other forums where a post shows up under "Guest" or "Anonymous" after an account has been deleted. I'd support that if someone simply wants their account removed. I think that would provide enough privacy protection in most cases and the discussion would remain completely intact. The only shortcoming here is that people often reference other posters by name when replying, so if you know a poster's screen name, you could still search it and find some results. It would make tracing someone's posts more difficult, though.

I also agree with Erin that something should be included in the user agreement, preferably near the top, indicating that posts will only be removed under exceptional circumstances.

08-10-2007, 08:08 PM	#16 (permalink)
Matthew Shea Senior Member Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Detroit Posts: 772	Overall, I'd say personal responsibility should be the rule of the day, as most others have suggested. I've posted a lot of personal stuff myself, but I always think it through and have yet to regret anything I've put online. We all make mistakes, but 24 hours should be plenty of time to re-think something and edit it. More than that and too many threads would get ruined when the OP had second thoughts and deleted the first post. Some other forums I'm on have as little as 60 minutes of edit time. If someone has an intensely personal topic they need advice on, I'd say it would be wise to contact the mods via PM first for advice on how to post the information in a way they won't regret later. For the issue of people requesting mass deletion of posts, I'd say it should be policy to turn them down outright. That's simply irresponsible on the poster's part and it shouldn't be the forum owner's responsibility to cater to their carelessness. Deletion requests should identify a reasonable (read: small) number of specific posts. I also like the idea of altering a post's ownership. I've seen other forums where a post shows up under "Guest" or "Anonymous" after an account has been deleted. I'd support that if someone simply wants their account removed. I think that would provide enough privacy protection in most cases and the discussion would remain completely intact. The only shortcoming here is that people often reference other posters by name when replying, so if you know a poster's screen name, you could still search it and find some results. It would make tracing someone's posts more difficult, though. I also agree with Erin that something should be included in the user agreement, preferably near the top, indicating that posts will only be removed under exceptional circumstances.