Requests to delete entire accounts

How do you handle them?

[lorenzinho2]

Just out of curiousity, how do you all handle it when a user requests to have their entire account (all posts, registration info, etc.) deleted?

My preference is not do it (and our TOS is clear that we don't have to) as I see the submitted comments as part of the conversation, and are often referenced by other posts.

But there's also a courtesy factor for longtime posters, who for whatever the reason, want to disappear.

Thoughts?

[larryhatch]

Its good and wise to have that spelled out in you TOS like you said.
Regardless, I would feel compelled to honor a removal request, even if its a major pain.
I would first make it very clear that you are making a special effort,
that you aren't going to put it all back in. No on-again off-again merry-go-round,
and don't advertise that you did this. Others may bury you under with similar requests. -Larry

[rogerd]

This is an interesting issue. I almost never delete a member's body of posts, as that can render entire threads meaningless or confusing.

Often, a member who presses on this is actually concerned about a few posts or a thread or two where they revealed more than they should have. I'm a bit more liberal about removal in this situation, particularly if the threads aren't particularly memorable anyway.

We do post warnings that we don't delete posts, and that members should think before they write. For a while on one forum, we were actually getting quite a few emails that said something like, "Hi, I posted my information and got enough feedback, can you please delete that thread now?"

The need for a no-deletion policy was hammered home to me on a technical forum (not one of mine) where all the threads that dealt with the issue I was researching had been turned into useless Swiss cheese by a member who, in a fit of pique, self-deleted all of his posts. Definitive threads on an important topic had been ruined, and I had to turn to another site for the info I needed.

[lorenzinho2]

Thanks guys.

Hey Roger, where are exactly do you post your warnings? Also, so it sounds like you don't allow any self deletion?

The Swiss Cheese analogy is a good one btw.

[Casethejoint]

I just had such a problem. We do have a no-deletion policy, primarily for reasons of disaggregating threads. This has been discussed on these forums before. However, do be sure that if you stick to your guns on not deleting, you're certain that there are no data protection issues concerning your servers storing personal information (however voluntarily revealed) about users.

[stapel]

The "disintegration" issue is a valid one, but -- who knows? -- a user might have a valid reason for "needing" to be gone. Might the situation be handled by changing the account name to something innocuous, like "old_member" or something, and preventing further access to it (by changing the password and contact e-mail to something else)?

Thank you.

Eliz.

[rogerd]

>>where are exactly do you post your warnings?

A forum announcement or sticky thread marked "IMPORTANT - Read Before Posting!" work reasonably well. Not everyone reads them, of course. (I'm convinced you could put a giant, blinking, red "WARNING" graphic in the middle of the page and about 10% of the visitors wouldn't see it. :)) I haven't done this yet, but a warning next to the posting edit box might be good, too; it could be suppressed for all but new members.

>>Also, so it sounds like you don't allow any self deletion?

I leave a short window, say, 10-20 minutes, during which the post can be edited or deleted by the member. After that, only mods can edit or delete.