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It is still pretty difficult to follow who is responding to whom if a bunch of users have deleted their accounts, making reply threads confusing.
by swhipple 12y ago
It is still pretty difficult to follow who is responding to whom if a bunch of users have deleted their accounts, making reply threads confusing.
- krapp 12y agoArguably, you don't need actual usernames to follow a thread, just a way to differentiate one user from another. Imageboards get by with extremely weak identity and referencing other posts rather than users, although, imageboards aren't exactly concerned with long-term quality conversations either. Still, it's possible to follow a thread without any identities at all. This would mean something a bit smarter than just replacing usernames with [deleted] though. Perhaps [deleted #nnn] or some other token. Edit: and if you really wanted to get paranoid about ambiguity, generate a new token per thread rather than per user, making it all but impossible to correlate the entire posting history for a deleted account. Also arguably, a thread for which a majority of users have deleted their accounts might not be worth following anyway.
- swhipple 12y agoFair point, I was mostly considering [deleted] since I think I've seen it in an HN thread that I came across while searching an old article. Numbers would work just as well. I wouldn't really consider the deleted accounts to have worse comments. Especially for old threads... some users just retire their accounts, but the comments are still valuable when stumbled upon in the future.
- omeid2 12y agoThis is not true, look at how Stack Exchange handles deleting users: Generate a random user with a specific pattern.