What to do when members want to be removed?

[musicales]

I've got a member who wants to be removed from my community. The trouble is hes' been involved in a lot of indepth discussions. If I remove him and all his comments there many of the discussions won't make sense any more. What should I do?

[eggy ricardo]

I suppose that is quite a difficult choice, as there may be data protection implications if you keep the user's info against their will, but then also if you remove them, make discussions messy as you stated. Also you have the issue of who 'owns' the posts as in a disclaimer or whatever you have probably said that posts are the opinion of the poster only, so you can't really change your mind and lay claim to them.

What you could do is rename the user to something like 'user left' and remove all data and put in generic data. This would mean you could keep the posts while getting rid of personal data. Likewise you could write a hack to give some sort of 'ex-user' administration to do something similar.

Interesting post - let us know what you decide!

Cheers
Richard

[danec]

I have a similar situation with my weblog: What do I do when someone emails me and asks to have the comments they made removed?

How do they prove that they posted the comment?

If I do remove it, do I need to make a notation on the page indicating that I've removed a comment?

I asked a bunch of prominent bloggers, and no one had a good answer.

Does anyone?

[jdMorgan]

Fix this with your terms of service. Any post made to the forum remains the responsibility and property of the poster, but by posting the author grants you a license to use the material as long as you see fit.

Make this obvious, and require new users to read it before posting.

Jim

[faltered]

musicales: I've seen a substitute name inserted such as "unregistered user" instead of that person's name. That way, conversations are still there and should be coherent.

[Liane]

This is a really good question! However, I would think that by submitting a post in your forum, the writer has given you explicit as well as implied permission to publicize his post.

I would also imagine that he can reasonably expect that you can't un-ring the bell. He may own it, but he has permitted the use of the content to you.

Personally, I would just write him a polite note saying just that and see what happens. If he really wants to persue the matter (I assume he is angry with you or someone else on the board) ... let him contact a lawyer and see if he has any grounds to force you to remove the material.

[rogerd]

I'll only remove posts where a member has inadvertently disclosed personal information or there is another compelling reason for removal. I only give members 20 minutes to edit or delete their posts - after that, they are part of the permanent archive.

One forum package I use is vBulletin, which has a user delete feature - if you delete a member, you can choose to leave all messages in place; the will subsequently show as being posted by "Guest".

Removing posts is a big issue. I remember one forum where a prolific member went back and deleted the content (there was no time limit) of every one of his posts. It completely destroyed many useful threads, including those that related to a topic I was researching. VERY irritating.

I've found it necessary to put a special announcement in some forums stating that posts can't be removed, and that members should think before posting. We had been getting daily requests like, "OK, I got my answer, can you delete my post now?" and, "I no longer want to participate. Please delete my nickname and all my posts." :)

If personal safety, libel, copyright violations, etc. are involved - remove posts. Otherwise, I'd refuse in most cases.

[musicales]

Thanks for all these interesting responses. I do think changing it to a 'guest' account is probably the best bet, along with, as suggested, a TOS that states they own, but we keep the post.

<..rushes off to ammend his TOS..>