4 ms·

I would love to know the answer to this question.

davesque 9y ago
Yeah so would I. Actually, I've often thought there should not be a restriction on the window during which you're allowed to delete a post on this site. I understand that there are reasons they might not want that such as to encourage civil interactions and so forth. But I still think there should be no restriction on it. There are things I've said in discussions I've had here that were not always well informed or motivated by my better self (yeah, you're free to peruse my comment history and see). Or I may have just grown up a bit since I said them. Either way, I've always felt it a bit unfair that they could be dug up years later.
- egeozcan 9y ago
  Maybe you should be able to delete a post with replies only if all the authors of the replies agree?
- fencepost 9y ago
  On the other hand, it can be incredibly frustrating to be looking for a piece of information and find a nice thread about Just That Thing on reddit - only to find that all of the posts that actually contained useful information are [deleted] and there's nothing left except "I have this problem too!" and "Thanks" "Thanks" "That fixed it!" posts.
- matuszeg 9y ago
  I usually make throwaways for the same reason. I think there is some merit to the idea of Right to be Forgotten[1] but at the same time, I feel like that would just help evil people hide their true nature. The other half of me wants to just have the NSA dump everything one day and let everyone know what everyone else has really been saying for the last 15 years. The first couple days would be tough for everyone to acclimate knowing who everyone really is. But in theory that is a net good. Deception is rarely for good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
  - lucb1e 9y ago
    > help evil people hide their true nature I doubt there's anyone who decides "Imma be evil" or realizes it of themselves to such an extent. If you believed you were evil, wouldn't you want to change it? Even terrorists don't think they're evil.
    - matuszeg 9y ago
      I agree, they do not think they are evil, but they know others think they are. So they mask their behavior. Dog whistling is a classic example[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
  - rpvnwnkl 9y ago
    The NSA idea was a major subplot of Southpark season 20. You could google ‘Troll Trace’ to get the gist of it.
  - davesque 9y ago
    Isn't that the entire point of the Right to be Forgotten? To say that there is such a right is to say that it's incorrect to expect that you could know a person's "true nature" just by seeing what they happened to think at any given time in their lives.
    - matuszeg 9y ago
      I agree one event does not summarize an individual. But if you can choose what is remembered and what is not you can pick and choose the data others use to determine who you are. If someone goes on a racist tirade on Facebook, yea that does not automatically make them a racist, but its a very good data point that people who meet that person should be able to reference. I believe the sentiment of the Right to be Forgotten is so the racist who changes their mind can move on from their past. But I feel this will be abused more than used correctly. Con artists will wildly abuse the Right to be Forgotten.
      - 9y ago
- dasil003 9y ago
  As a user I understand that, but as a forum administrator I have a different view point. About a decade ago I was involved in building what became for a short span one of the best cinephile discussion boards on the Internet. Aside from HN, or maybe MeFi I can't think of any forum that sustained a signal-to-noise ratio of that quality for that long. It was night-and-day better than IMDB boards. Naive and idealistic as we were, we have users full control to edit/delete posts. Over time we tightened that to have time limits, etc. But there was one big loophole which was you could delete your entire account and it would purge all your posts. Eventually one of our most prominent members with thousands of posts decided to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. The result? Utter incomprehensibility of half the threads, effectively rendering the history useless if not downright misleading. I get that the pendulum has swung too far and users deserve more control of their data, but a public forum is fundamentally a different thing from a social network—a forum thread is different from a post in that the value of the thread is communal, it should not be owned by the individual in the same way that it makes sense for a social media post to be. And even in that case, I think most of the problem comes from the giant many-tentacled nature of Facebooks and Googles where the data doesn't even come from directly entering it in and it's incredibly difficult to even visualize what they have. For a simple forum I think it's perfectly reasonable (and clear!) to have ToS that state: you post it, it's here forever, barring special requests due to extreme circumstances or legal reasons.
  - c22 9y ago
    A good middle ground would be that account deletion changes the user's historical post attributions to Anonymous.
    - woolvalley 9y ago
      If you still allow single post deletion, that leads to scripting where people delete each post, one by one.
      - c22 9y ago
        Sure, I was thinking with time limits on delete (presumably desirable if you're trying to avoid incoherent threads). It could also lead to accounts that post once and get deleted if you don't otherwise allow anonymous comments.

Yeah so would I. Actually, I've often thought there should not be a restriction on the window during which you're allowed to delete a post on this site. I understand that there are reasons they might not want that such as to encourage civil interactions and so forth. But I still think there should be no restriction on it. There are things I've said in discussions I've had here that were not always well informed or motivated by my better self (yeah, you're free to peruse my comment history and see). Or I may have just grown up a bit since I said them. Either way, I've always felt it a bit unfair that they could be dug up years later.

egeozcan 9y ago
Maybe you should be able to delete a post with replies only if all the authors of the replies agree?
fencepost 9y ago
On the other hand, it can be incredibly frustrating to be looking for a piece of information and find a nice thread about Just That Thing on reddit - only to find that all of the posts that actually contained useful information are [deleted] and there's nothing left except "I have this problem too!" and "Thanks" "Thanks" "That fixed it!" posts.
matuszeg 9y ago
I usually make throwaways for the same reason. I think there is some merit to the idea of Right to be Forgotten[1] but at the same time, I feel like that would just help evil people hide their true nature. The other half of me wants to just have the NSA dump everything one day and let everyone know what everyone else has really been saying for the last 15 years. The first couple days would be tough for everyone to acclimate knowing who everyone really is. But in theory that is a net good. Deception is rarely for good. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_be_forgotten
- lucb1e 9y ago
  > help evil people hide their true nature I doubt there's anyone who decides "Imma be evil" or realizes it of themselves to such an extent. If you believed you were evil, wouldn't you want to change it? Even terrorists don't think they're evil.
  - matuszeg 9y ago
    I agree, they do not think they are evil, but they know others think they are. So they mask their behavior. Dog whistling is a classic example[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog-whistle_politics
- rpvnwnkl 9y ago
  The NSA idea was a major subplot of Southpark season 20. You could google ‘Troll Trace’ to get the gist of it.
- davesque 9y ago
  Isn't that the entire point of the Right to be Forgotten? To say that there is such a right is to say that it's incorrect to expect that you could know a person's "true nature" just by seeing what they happened to think at any given time in their lives.
  - matuszeg 9y ago
    I agree one event does not summarize an individual. But if you can choose what is remembered and what is not you can pick and choose the data others use to determine who you are. If someone goes on a racist tirade on Facebook, yea that does not automatically make them a racist, but its a very good data point that people who meet that person should be able to reference. I believe the sentiment of the Right to be Forgotten is so the racist who changes their mind can move on from their past. But I feel this will be abused more than used correctly. Con artists will wildly abuse the Right to be Forgotten.
    - 9y ago
dasil003 9y ago
As a user I understand that, but as a forum administrator I have a different view point. About a decade ago I was involved in building what became for a short span one of the best cinephile discussion boards on the Internet. Aside from HN, or maybe MeFi I can't think of any forum that sustained a signal-to-noise ratio of that quality for that long. It was night-and-day better than IMDB boards. Naive and idealistic as we were, we have users full control to edit/delete posts. Over time we tightened that to have time limits, etc. But there was one big loophole which was you could delete your entire account and it would purge all your posts. Eventually one of our most prominent members with thousands of posts decided to (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻. The result? Utter incomprehensibility of half the threads, effectively rendering the history useless if not downright misleading. I get that the pendulum has swung too far and users deserve more control of their data, but a public forum is fundamentally a different thing from a social network—a forum thread is different from a post in that the value of the thread is communal, it should not be owned by the individual in the same way that it makes sense for a social media post to be. And even in that case, I think most of the problem comes from the giant many-tentacled nature of Facebooks and Googles where the data doesn't even come from directly entering it in and it's incredibly difficult to even visualize what they have. For a simple forum I think it's perfectly reasonable (and clear!) to have ToS that state: you post it, it's here forever, barring special requests due to extreme circumstances or legal reasons.
- c22 9y ago
  A good middle ground would be that account deletion changes the user's historical post attributions to Anonymous.
  - woolvalley 9y ago
    If you still allow single post deletion, that leads to scripting where people delete each post, one by one.
    - c22 9y ago
      Sure, I was thinking with time limits on delete (presumably desirable if you're trying to avoid incoherent threads). It could also lead to accounts that post once and get deleted if you don't otherwise allow anonymous comments.