Sam Danner and Post Deletion

A while back we discussed whether there was any harm in posters being able to delete their posts. Sense of the group was that this was fine. I think we all kind of assumed it would be used for things like duplicates and such, but now Sam Danner has deleted some of his posts, giving the reason as "American Family opposes me on this site." So, given who he is or at least pretends to be, such paranoia isn't surprising, but at this point, his posting is kind of a part of the Wordforge record. Should somebody be able to delete real posts several days after the fact? Or should they generally be held accountable for their words?

Hmmm, interesting question.

What's the argument for NOT allowing people to delete their own posts?

Fucks with the historic record? Renders the conversation flow less meaningful? Those are the main arguments against self-deletion. The main pro arguments are that it saves the staff from having to delete inadvertent duplicate posts, and makes the board more attractive to people who like to do things for themselves.

One thing I like about the new board is that there's not a time limit for editing posts.

It's not only let me correct some typos in my Blue Room thread, but it allowed me to fix all the broken YouTube links there that didn't carry over from the old software.

Turning discussions into gibberish won't be much of a draw. Most people who are deleting posts more than say 24 hrs after posting them are doing it to troll. If there is a real need, it isn't hard to ask a staff member to take care of it for you. Remember, people searching for topics also find old threads that will bring them here and it would be a shame to lose them because what they found was incomplete, confusing crap.

The other reason we used to have the policy is because the hard deletes would cause havok with the software.

I don't think users can do hard deletes, but I'm also under the impression that Xenforo handles them fine. I'm thinking we need a time limit on user self-deletes. As Tamar points out, a discussion with missing parts is an unattractive mess.

I'm fine with editing. Deleting, I think, is too far a step. Letting a member delete their own post means letting a member disrupt the conversation because when people go back to reference a post, and it's not there, then it just muddies up the water, which means it would be a very popular Red Room tactic for some.

What's the difference between deleting and editing a post to say 'I like cheese' and nothing else?

There isn't much difference, other than the tag that says it was edited. A long time ago, Wordforge didn't have that tag, and I for one, made frequent use of that fact to troll others back in the day. It was especially fun to edit a post that had, for example, "ancalagon agrees," to say something like "ancalagon is a fag." But if you quote it, and then somebody edits (and there is evidence of an edit), it is less problematic than a full delete.

I agree with the time-limit idea, if that can be implemented. After, say five days, no more ability to edit/delete.

Hmm, seems that the option is either yes or no, but we can't set a time limit. It is possible to set a time limit for post editing, though.

Any more discussion on this?

Is it possible to get reports when posts are deleted? If there was some kind of log then we could keep on top of people deleting old stuff just to mess around.

Tech Minions, assemble! Is that possible?

The ghost copies exist, but we should find out whether regular users can perma-delete. I have that power, but that could well be an admins only kind of thing.

Any more discussion on this?

Nay.

Done.