9 ms·

Interesting. If it's alright to ask, why do you have this policy? In my case I never delete my posts/comments and always edit with a big "EDIT" disclosure.

randomdata 3y ago
A comment’s value rarely outlasts more than 24 hours, if that. Why hoard data?
- asylteltine 3y ago
  That’s not true at all. Most of the random helpful searches I have done dig up comments that are months or years old. It’s basically like making a post asking a really obscure question and then just writing nvm figured it out. At the same time, I want Reddit to fail
- Cerium 3y ago
  That's crazy, most of the comments I read are months if not years old.
  - randomdata 3y ago
    If I wrote something especially noteworthy, I'll likely remember in my mind forevermore. If memory loss does occur someday, oh well. Am I going to remember to care? The rest served its purpose at the time, but isn't something I will ever want to look back on again. What do you find so interesting in your old work?
    - Cerium 3y ago
      It's not my old work I want to read, it's that of others. Comments are a frequently valuable shared annotation system for discussion on a post. Frequently I will search reddit for answers to questions I have and find a useful result in a comment. Other times I want to get a summary of a new topic so I will find an applicable subreddit and sort by top from the last year to get an idea of what is interesting for this community.
      - randomdata 3y ago
        Wherein lies the value of seeing that others read your work? As the saying goes, work is done for those who pay for it. When I, like you, write comments on sites like these I am the one paying for it. I derive entertainment value for the cost I am sinking, so I find it to be an acceptable trade, but beyond that small window the entertainment is over and the value of what was produced is gone. To keep it around beyond that is just hoarding data. I can appreciate that one might find value in feeling like they are helping out a greater community by allowing others to read their work. I commend those who see that value. But even that seems fleeting. If your work disappeared without you noticing, the value derived from that would not be lost. It is not the perpetual existence of the data that provides that value. Although, I think the greater question here is: What value is there in allowing a for-profit company like Reddit to get rich selling the work you paid for?
        mfcl 3y ago
        So, you'd delete your old comments because you would rather no one in the world get any kind of value from them since you are not getting any anymore?
        randomdata 3y ago
        I would delete comments that are past their prime like I would discard expired food in my fridge, yes. What are you going to gain from keeping something that is now rotten?
        crazygringo 3y ago
        It's not about you, it's about everyone else who might benefit from reading your comment. What are you taking that benefit away from them? Why do you dislike other internet users like that? Also comments don't rot on the internet, nothing is ever "past its prime". Why do you think comments lose value to other people? In fact, there's quite likely a long tail of future users who would benefit, who are even larger than the short tail of people in the current 24h.
  - Kye 3y ago
    I've had some interesting discussions replying to 10+ year old comments I find in Google ever since Reddit allowed subs to opt in to replies to older threads.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Exactly. And it's so sad when I find a thread that clearly had exactly the answer I was looking for to a question, with somebody replying "thanks so much that answers it perfectly!" only the answer itself was deleted. :(
    - ajdude 3y ago
      A couple years ago I came across a deleted Reddit comment[1] and I wished that I could read it so badly I messaged the op and asked him what he said. He didn't remember, and I was hoping so badly it would've been restored after I read this news. Alas, it wasn't. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80ff/comment/fchbf26/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80f...
      - nanidin 3y ago
        comment source: I believe KitchenAid stand mixers [assembled in America](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18), and the parts (edit: excepting the motor) do not appear to be sourced from China.\n\nHave a look around your local Ikea; a lot of their stuff, especially kitchen tools, are from Europe, Taiwan, etc, and not China. They label the source of all their stuff, so you can avoid stuff from China.\n\nZojirushi is a Japanese brand that makes all manner of appliances. Good quality. Work well. Hold up over time. Top-quality engineering.\n\nBlendtec blenders are also assembled in America. Their website casually avoid mentioning where parts are sourced, but they're at least an American firm.\n\nJapan also makes some pretty good knives, if you're in the market for those.\n\nFinally, there is always eBay. And for some appliances, such as toasters, you may in fact be able to get a better product than is available on shelves now.
        rekoil 3y ago
        Where did you find that?
        nanidin 3y ago
- ajdude 3y ago
  A couple years ago I came across a deleted Reddit comment[1] and I wished that I could read it so badly I messaged the op and asked him what he said. He didn't remember, and I was hoping so badly it would've been restored after I read this news. Alas, it wasn't. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80ff/comment/fchbf26/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80f...
- rafark 3y ago
  I have to disagree. Landing on a reddit thread after googling something is very common.
  - red-iron-pine 3y ago
    random reddit posts have saved my butt several times in "oh god oh god I broke the data lake" or similar situations. Some rando post from 2 years ago, too. Deleting them after 24 hours just kinda takes away the value prop for reddit. If I want a real-ish-time convo with someone then i'll get on Discord; the value of reddit is the posts live on.
Karawebnetwork 3y ago
I do the same. In my case, it's doxxing prevention. I don't like that someone can put my profile on one of the reddit inspector sites and get a detailed profile of me, including my age, where I live and my hobbies. I also don't like it when people can click on my name and get my entire history across all subreddits. That's not the case here because I consider HN to be the equivalent of a single Subreddit, so the information is less diverse. I don't talk about every facet of my life here. On the other hand, I'm the kind of person who uses a different username on every forum. It's a habit I picked up in the early days of the internet. This is especially useful in this era where even news organization websites will quote your online username to add to their stories.
- bunga-bunga 3y ago
  Why don’t you just use throwaways? I stopped reusing usernames online long long ago.
  - Maximus9000 3y ago
    The trouble with throw away accounts is that there is technology to link the accounts by comparing your writing style to other accounts. Hacker news had a good demonstration of that awhile back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016
    - orev 3y ago
      That would apply equally to using different usernames on each site, so not really relevant to the point being made here.
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
    - Karawebnetwork 3y ago
      Some might call me paranoid, but I also change my writing style between sensitive accounts. Not all, because that would be a bother, but between accounts where I'm a moderator and those where I'm a normal user, I make sure to change my mindset. On some accounts, I translate everything I write twice for greater anonymity.
firecall 3y ago
I do something similar. I switched my outlook on life a while back. I take somewhat Buddhist Lite approach to life and consider possessions as misery and so on. I extend that to online conversations. I just delete them and clear my history. I don’t feel everything I’ve ever written online, every message and every email should live online forever. It’s a mental burden that I don’t want. So I auto delete where I can. It’s cathartic. I think I started doing it during my burnout nervous breakdown phase after exiting corporate life. I found I’d write things on Slack and then delete them. The anxiety of having my thoughts out there weighed on me. Thoughts and conversations should be transient, I feel. Each to their own! :-)
- ted_bunny 3y ago
  It's all a Zen Garden, baby! Folks, close your tabs. Close them all. Don't even check if they're important. They're not.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
my reddit account was deleted years ago, and I wasn't that strict. But the big thing that lead to me deleting and creating new accounts was basically mass taggers. Long long story short, I probably made some comment on some apparently "bad" forum years ago (let's say, 2012). And hell, I was dwnvoted vehemently and was arguing a storm against it. But because those mass taggers just care about where you post, and not what you post, I was labeled as a bigot. No big deal. Years later (maybe 2015) I deleted most of my older comments anyway as some transition phase as I left college. Then in 2018 or so some person called me that specific bigoted phrase. Remember, this would be 3 years ago, and I commented heavily. No way any human on a video game subreddit cared enough about me to dig through 3 years of comment history (which by then would be mostly video games and anime) to find comments they disagreed with. Especially when those comments don't exist on my profile. I was clearly mass tagged and someone wanted an easy insult. So I just threw that all away. grabbed the saved posts I cared about, deleted some 6 year old account and restarted in a new handle. I didn't want to bother with any future drama that was already well behind me. Because reddit doesn't care if my account is 6 days old or 6 years old; there's no difference. Why bother trying to redeem some crude handle I made up on the spot in the beginning of college? ---- TLDR there are very annoying redditors who will troll histories and tag you without context and I was tired of dealing with that.

randomdata 3y ago

A comment’s value rarely outlasts more than 24 hours, if that. Why hoard data?

asylteltine 3y ago
That’s not true at all. Most of the random helpful searches I have done dig up comments that are months or years old. It’s basically like making a post asking a really obscure question and then just writing nvm figured it out. At the same time, I want Reddit to fail
Cerium 3y ago
That's crazy, most of the comments I read are months if not years old.
- randomdata 3y ago
  If I wrote something especially noteworthy, I'll likely remember in my mind forevermore. If memory loss does occur someday, oh well. Am I going to remember to care? The rest served its purpose at the time, but isn't something I will ever want to look back on again. What do you find so interesting in your old work?
  - Cerium 3y ago
    It's not my old work I want to read, it's that of others. Comments are a frequently valuable shared annotation system for discussion on a post. Frequently I will search reddit for answers to questions I have and find a useful result in a comment. Other times I want to get a summary of a new topic so I will find an applicable subreddit and sort by top from the last year to get an idea of what is interesting for this community.
    - randomdata 3y ago
      Wherein lies the value of seeing that others read your work? As the saying goes, work is done for those who pay for it. When I, like you, write comments on sites like these I am the one paying for it. I derive entertainment value for the cost I am sinking, so I find it to be an acceptable trade, but beyond that small window the entertainment is over and the value of what was produced is gone. To keep it around beyond that is just hoarding data. I can appreciate that one might find value in feeling like they are helping out a greater community by allowing others to read their work. I commend those who see that value. But even that seems fleeting. If your work disappeared without you noticing, the value derived from that would not be lost. It is not the perpetual existence of the data that provides that value. Although, I think the greater question here is: What value is there in allowing a for-profit company like Reddit to get rich selling the work you paid for?
      - mfcl 3y ago
        So, you'd delete your old comments because you would rather no one in the world get any kind of value from them since you are not getting any anymore?
        randomdata 3y ago
        I would delete comments that are past their prime like I would discard expired food in my fridge, yes. What are you going to gain from keeping something that is now rotten?
        crazygringo 3y ago
        It's not about you, it's about everyone else who might benefit from reading your comment. What are you taking that benefit away from them? Why do you dislike other internet users like that? Also comments don't rot on the internet, nothing is ever "past its prime". Why do you think comments lose value to other people? In fact, there's quite likely a long tail of future users who would benefit, who are even larger than the short tail of people in the current 24h.
- Kye 3y ago
  I've had some interesting discussions replying to 10+ year old comments I find in Google ever since Reddit allowed subs to opt in to replies to older threads.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Exactly. And it's so sad when I find a thread that clearly had exactly the answer I was looking for to a question, with somebody replying "thanks so much that answers it perfectly!" only the answer itself was deleted. :(
  - ajdude 3y ago
    A couple years ago I came across a deleted Reddit comment[1] and I wished that I could read it so badly I messaged the op and asked him what he said. He didn't remember, and I was hoping so badly it would've been restored after I read this news. Alas, it wasn't. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80ff/comment/fchbf26/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80f...
    - nanidin 3y ago
      comment source: I believe KitchenAid stand mixers [assembled in America](https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=0qKp-0h9P18), and the parts (edit: excepting the motor) do not appear to be sourced from China.\n\nHave a look around your local Ikea; a lot of their stuff, especially kitchen tools, are from Europe, Taiwan, etc, and not China. They label the source of all their stuff, so you can avoid stuff from China.\n\nZojirushi is a Japanese brand that makes all manner of appliances. Good quality. Work well. Hold up over time. Top-quality engineering.\n\nBlendtec blenders are also assembled in America. Their website casually avoid mentioning where parts are sourced, but they're at least an American firm.\n\nJapan also makes some pretty good knives, if you're in the market for those.\n\nFinally, there is always eBay. And for some appliances, such as toasters, you may in fact be able to get a better product than is available on shelves now.
      - rekoil 3y ago
        Where did you find that?
        nanidin 3y ago
ajdude 3y ago
A couple years ago I came across a deleted Reddit comment[1] and I wished that I could read it so badly I messaged the op and asked him what he said. He didn't remember, and I was hoping so badly it would've been restored after I read this news. Alas, it wasn't. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80ff/comment/fchbf26/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 https://old.reddit.com/r/avoidchineseproducts/comments/eh80f...
rafark 3y ago
I have to disagree. Landing on a reddit thread after googling something is very common.
- red-iron-pine 3y ago
  random reddit posts have saved my butt several times in "oh god oh god I broke the data lake" or similar situations. Some rando post from 2 years ago, too. Deleting them after 24 hours just kinda takes away the value prop for reddit. If I want a real-ish-time convo with someone then i'll get on Discord; the value of reddit is the posts live on.

Karawebnetwork 3y ago

I do the same. In my case, it's doxxing prevention. I don't like that someone can put my profile on one of the reddit inspector sites and get a detailed profile of me, including my age, where I live and my hobbies. I also don't like it when people can click on my name and get my entire history across all subreddits. That's not the case here because I consider HN to be the equivalent of a single Subreddit, so the information is less diverse. I don't talk about every facet of my life here. On the other hand, I'm the kind of person who uses a different username on every forum. It's a habit I picked up in the early days of the internet. This is especially useful in this era where even news organization websites will quote your online username to add to their stories.

bunga-bunga 3y ago
Why don’t you just use throwaways? I stopped reusing usernames online long long ago.
- Maximus9000 3y ago
  The trouble with throw away accounts is that there is technology to link the accounts by comparing your writing style to other accounts. Hacker news had a good demonstration of that awhile back. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33755016
  - orev 3y ago
    That would apply equally to using different usernames on each site, so not really relevant to the point being made here.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  - Karawebnetwork 3y ago
    Some might call me paranoid, but I also change my writing style between sensitive accounts. Not all, because that would be a bother, but between accounts where I'm a moderator and those where I'm a normal user, I make sure to change my mindset. On some accounts, I translate everything I write twice for greater anonymity.

firecall 3y ago

I do something similar. I switched my outlook on life a while back. I take somewhat Buddhist Lite approach to life and consider possessions as misery and so on. I extend that to online conversations. I just delete them and clear my history. I don’t feel everything I’ve ever written online, every message and every email should live online forever. It’s a mental burden that I don’t want. So I auto delete where I can. It’s cathartic. I think I started doing it during my burnout nervous breakdown phase after exiting corporate life. I found I’d write things on Slack and then delete them. The anxiety of having my thoughts out there weighed on me. Thoughts and conversations should be transient, I feel. Each to their own! :-)

ted_bunny 3y ago
It's all a Zen Garden, baby! Folks, close your tabs. Close them all. Don't even check if they're important. They're not.

johnnyanmac 3y ago

my reddit account was deleted years ago, and I wasn't that strict. But the big thing that lead to me deleting and creating new accounts was basically mass taggers. Long long story short, I probably made some comment on some apparently "bad" forum years ago (let's say, 2012). And hell, I was dwnvoted vehemently and was arguing a storm against it. But because those mass taggers just care about where you post, and not what you post, I was labeled as a bigot. No big deal. Years later (maybe 2015) I deleted most of my older comments anyway as some transition phase as I left college. Then in 2018 or so some person called me that specific bigoted phrase. Remember, this would be 3 years ago, and I commented heavily. No way any human on a video game subreddit cared enough about me to dig through 3 years of comment history (which by then would be mostly video games and anime) to find comments they disagreed with. Especially when those comments don't exist on my profile. I was clearly mass tagged and someone wanted an easy insult. So I just threw that all away. grabbed the saved posts I cared about, deleted some 6 year old account and restarted in a new handle. I didn't want to bother with any future drama that was already well behind me. Because reddit doesn't care if my account is 6 days old or 6 years old; there's no difference. Why bother trying to redeem some crude handle I made up on the spot in the beginning of college? ---- TLDR there are very annoying redditors who will troll histories and tag you without context and I was tired of dealing with that.