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Not to mention that you have no rights over the content you create on SO. You can’t take your content off the site if it happens to be an answered question or a

by sedatk 3y ago

Not to mention that you have no rights over the content you create on SO. You can’t take your content off the site if it happens to be an answered question or an accepted answer. Their reasoning is “but the content would be gone and would stop helping people”. The way it completely dismisses your efforts and your emotional connection with your own creation is the greatest indictment of how SO lacks the human perspective. No other platform, not even post-Elon Twitter or Facebook does this. The only exception could be Wikipedia, and it communicates its content format and collective editing mechanics very clearly. SO just isn’t that but thinks it’s whatever it works for them.

wodenokoto 3y ago
> No other platform, not even post-Elon Twitter or Facebook does this. Doesn't hacker news also do this?
- sedatk 3y ago
  It doesn’t. You just have to send an email.
  - jb1991 3y ago
    The question was about whether hacker news allows you to remove your content? It does not. You can send an email just to have your content anonymized, but it will remain forever.
    - sedatk 3y ago
      That’s appalling. I thought they honored deletion requests. Terrible look on HNs side too. Edit: It seems like there’s a wiggle room, but still terrible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293237
      - deleted 3y ago
        [deleted]
      - collaborative 3y ago
        I happen to have tried this multiple times. Every now and again I want to erase all trace of me on the internet. HN doesn't allow it. They tell you that you can give a spreadsheet with comment ids and how you want to rephrase things in case you've given TMI about yourself (in order to anonymize). I just don't have the time to go through my entire history to do this. So I attempt to post less, knowing I don't own my comments and I can be tracked Reddit is actually a lot better in this regard
        jb1991 3y ago
        Perhaps if HN eventually improves in this area then we will have all the proof we need that it is in fact becoming more and more like Reddit. Because it seems like a lot of the discourse is already checking a lot of those other boxes.
Dylan16807 3y ago
If you have such an emotional connection to your Q&A content that it would drive you to delete it, I think you're using the site wrong.
- sedatk 3y ago
  I do because I’m not a robot? I wrote answers that made it to HN’s frontpage (this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5243389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5243389). Later, that answer was edited by automod to remove “Hello” line because somebody hated that people greeted each other on SO. I wrote paragraphs only to be closed by mods as “opinion based” or whatever, so I had to turn them into blog posts, and they got picked up by popular publishing channels, like this one: https://medium.com/hackernoon/are-interfaces-code-smell-bd19abc266d3 https://medium.com/hackernoon/are-interfaces-code-smell-bd19... Of course I care about how my work and my relationship with it is treated. Why don’t you?
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for. I'm not saying you shouldn't care about things like that. And I wasn't talking about the issue of mods deleting entire answered questions. I was talking about single contributions, and mods deleting things is the exact opposite of what my post was addressing! On the other side, that compiler post is fun but it's not some big effortful thing. Caring about it some makes sense, but I wouldn't care about it that much.
    - sedatk 3y ago
      > Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for It wasn't a blog post on the site; I extended it to a blog post after mods closed it and flagged it for deletion. As a top 0.5% or whatever contributor of SO, believe me, I know what the site is for. > but it's not some big effortful thing It doesn't have to be. It's my thing. It sounds like me, it carries my spirit. Nobody else would have written it then. It reflects a period of my life, how I perceived things; and more importantly, its continued existence has an impact on me regardless how it's licensed. Say, if my writing style, or my choice of words, or my tone were associated with a traumatic event in my past, SO's insistence on keeping it up would be explicitly abusive, don't you agree? Even if no such event had occured, SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishes is also abusive; it deprives me of control over my thoughts and my words. Is it legal? Yes, 100%. But, is it ethical? No, I don't think so. And for what? For keeping the answer for "how can I simulate a click on a DOM element?" online, as if that problem immediately becomes "unsolveable" when that comment, heck, the whole SO web site goes down. What a pretentious excuse to keep your income stream steady. > I wouldn't care about it that much You would if you were me.
fabian2k 3y ago
The content is licenced under the Creative Commons license, which ensures that everyone can take it and make something useful out of it. For example in the case Stack Overflow turns evil, adds a paywall or something like that. This is a lot better than almost every other comparable site with user-created content. In most cases the company has the rights there and can do whatever they want with it, and users have no right to reuse the content of the site.
- sedatk 3y ago
  SO can still respect Creative Commons and the human at the same time by granting their wish to remove their content from SO when they request it.

by sedatk 3y ago

wodenokoto 3y ago

> No other platform, not even post-Elon Twitter or Facebook does this. Doesn't hacker news also do this?

sedatk 3y ago
It doesn’t. You just have to send an email.
- jb1991 3y ago
  The question was about whether hacker news allows you to remove your content? It does not. You can send an email just to have your content anonymized, but it will remain forever.
  - sedatk 3y ago
    That’s appalling. I thought they honored deletion requests. Terrible look on HNs side too. Edit: It seems like there’s a wiggle room, but still terrible. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28293237
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    - collaborative 3y ago
      I happen to have tried this multiple times. Every now and again I want to erase all trace of me on the internet. HN doesn't allow it. They tell you that you can give a spreadsheet with comment ids and how you want to rephrase things in case you've given TMI about yourself (in order to anonymize). I just don't have the time to go through my entire history to do this. So I attempt to post less, knowing I don't own my comments and I can be tracked Reddit is actually a lot better in this regard
      - jb1991 3y ago
        Perhaps if HN eventually improves in this area then we will have all the proof we need that it is in fact becoming more and more like Reddit. Because it seems like a lot of the discourse is already checking a lot of those other boxes.

Dylan16807 3y ago

If you have such an emotional connection to your Q&A content that it would drive you to delete it, I think you're using the site wrong.

sedatk 3y ago
I do because I’m not a robot? I wrote answers that made it to HN’s frontpage (this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5243389 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5243389). Later, that answer was edited by automod to remove “Hello” line because somebody hated that people greeted each other on SO. I wrote paragraphs only to be closed by mods as “opinion based” or whatever, so I had to turn them into blog posts, and they got picked up by popular publishing channels, like this one: https://medium.com/hackernoon/are-interfaces-code-smell-bd19abc266d3 https://medium.com/hackernoon/are-interfaces-code-smell-bd19... Of course I care about how my work and my relationship with it is treated. Why don’t you?
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for. I'm not saying you shouldn't care about things like that. And I wasn't talking about the issue of mods deleting entire answered questions. I was talking about single contributions, and mods deleting things is the exact opposite of what my post was addressing! On the other side, that compiler post is fun but it's not some big effortful thing. Caring about it some makes sense, but I wouldn't care about it that much.
  - sedatk 3y ago
    > Something long enough to be a blog post like that isn't what the site is for It wasn't a blog post on the site; I extended it to a blog post after mods closed it and flagged it for deletion. As a top 0.5% or whatever contributor of SO, believe me, I know what the site is for. > but it's not some big effortful thing It doesn't have to be. It's my thing. It sounds like me, it carries my spirit. Nobody else would have written it then. It reflects a period of my life, how I perceived things; and more importantly, its continued existence has an impact on me regardless how it's licensed. Say, if my writing style, or my choice of words, or my tone were associated with a traumatic event in my past, SO's insistence on keeping it up would be explicitly abusive, don't you agree? Even if no such event had occured, SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishes is also abusive; it deprives me of control over my thoughts and my words. Is it legal? Yes, 100%. But, is it ethical? No, I don't think so. And for what? For keeping the answer for "how can I simulate a click on a DOM element?" online, as if that problem immediately becomes "unsolveable" when that comment, heck, the whole SO web site goes down. What a pretentious excuse to keep your income stream steady. > I wouldn't care about it that much You would if you were me.

fabian2k 3y ago

The content is licenced under the Creative Commons license, which ensures that everyone can take it and make something useful out of it. For example in the case Stack Overflow turns evil, adds a paywall or something like that. This is a lot better than almost every other comparable site with user-created content. In most cases the company has the rights there and can do whatever they want with it, and users have no right to reuse the content of the site.

sedatk 3y ago
SO can still respect Creative Commons and the human at the same time by granting their wish to remove their content from SO when they request it.