Thinking About Deleting My Account

Cornflake · Posted: Sun Mar 25, 2012 8:06 pm Post subject:

With respect to the purpose of this website, I think the main reason why mass deletion isn't readily available or encouraged is because of the mess it makes of threads, irrespective of whether a means already exists or one could be written. I don't mean a technical mess, from a logical database viewpoint (although it's a risk, of course), but simply from the viewpoint of a user viewing a shredded conversation.

A removal process would be blind: it would happily demolish chatter amongst friends along with very useful, serious articles or links to others.
Plus, there would be little point unless quoted posts were also properly handled, but that would have to go beyond database manipulation and into grepping post content, stripping bits out, and rewriting the content.
Finally, as sliqua-jcooter touches on, deletion is ultimately pointless unless every single reader and potential cache of that information can be traced and erased - hardly a practical proposition. Laughing

Alternatively the whole website could be accessible to members only - but that shuts out the easy, anonymous search for information/help and I think would be a backward step.
This place is actually an incredibly useful resource and as ol' timers, I think we tend to lose sight of that aspect a little.
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Giraffe: a ruminant with a view.