User Self Delete

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imkingdavid
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by imkingdavid »

Pony99CA wrote:Out of curiosity, what happens now when a user with posts is deactivated? Are the posts visible?

If they are, I don't see much use in having both Deactivate and Soft Delete. Just deactivate the user and display "Anonymous" (or whatever) as the user name. If the user reactivates (he should be able to, right?), then his user name shows up again.

I also don't think that the user should ever be able to hard delete himself; that should require an Admin action.

Steve
Soft Delete is currently another word for Deactivate. I was have been told to rename soft delete -> deactivate to remove any confusion between this and post soft deletion. When the Soft Delete (posts) PR is merged, I may implement a way to request that all of your own posts be soft deleted when you are deactivated as well.

I have not looked at this PR for a long time and I'm actually considering starting over since I'm not overly happy with what I've done on this so far.

There are three modes of deletion planned:
  • Hard delete - this removes the user account from the database, including all profile, posts, received pms, etc. The username and email are now available for another account to register with. Topics containing the user's posts may no longer make sense.
  • Hard delete, but retain posts - This removes the user account from the database, including the profile information and pms. Posts are retained but appear to be posted by anonymous (using the user's username for the guest poster, I think?)
  • Deactivate - Similar to facebook, the account is deactivated (reason: soft deleted, differentiates between user soft delete and admin soft delete). All posts, private messages, and PMs are retained, but posts appear to be posted by guest poster with the same username (as I said, when soft delete is merged, posts will be soft deleted). If the user soft deleted himself, he may simply log back in to reactivate his account. If the admin soft deleted him, he cannot reactivate without asking the admin to do so. Posts will appear as his when he reactivates.
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Jacob
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Jacob »

imkingdavid wrote:Hard delete, but retain posts - (...) Posts are retained but appear to be posted by anonymous (using the user's username for the guest poster, I think?)
The username should be kept, in my opinion, so topics keep making sense (who said what).
(I suppose this is what you mean by "posted by anonymous using the user's username"? In other words, the username in plain text, whithout the link to profile?)

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MichaelC
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by MichaelC »

imkingdavid wrote:
Pony99CA wrote:Out of curiosity, what happens now when a user with posts is deactivated? Are the posts visible?

If they are, I don't see much use in having both Deactivate and Soft Delete. Just deactivate the user and display "Anonymous" (or whatever) as the user name. If the user reactivates (he should be able to, right?), then his user name shows up again.

I also don't think that the user should ever be able to hard delete himself; that should require an Admin action.

Steve
Soft Delete is currently another word for Deactivate. I was have been told to rename soft delete -> deactivate to remove any confusion between this and post soft deletion. When the Soft Delete (posts) PR is merged, I may implement a way to request that all of your own posts be soft deleted when you are deactivated as well.

I have not looked at this PR for a long time and I'm actually considering starting over since I'm not overly happy with what I've done on this so far.

There are three modes of deletion planned:
  • Hard delete - this removes the user account from the database, including all profile, posts, received pms, etc. The username and email are now available for another account to register with. Topics containing the user's posts may no longer make sense.
  • Hard delete, but retain posts - This removes the user account from the database, including the profile information and pms. Posts are retained but appear to be posted by anonymous (using the user's username for the guest poster, I think?)
  • Deactivate - Similar to facebook, the account is deactivated (reason: soft deleted, differentiates between user soft delete and admin soft delete). All posts, private messages, and PMs are retained, but posts appear to be posted by guest poster with the same username (as I said, when soft delete is merged, posts will be soft deleted). If the user soft deleted himself, he may simply log back in to reactivate his account. If the admin soft deleted him, he cannot reactivate without asking the admin to do so. Posts will appear as his when he reactivates.
My suggestion (and when I used the phrase 'soft deleting a user') was different from deactivating? It is Option 3 below, I think it should be separate from deactivating (although perhaps give the soft delete posts option to deactivation as well).

So the following mods of deletion:
  1. Hard delete - this removes the user account from the database, including all profile, hard deletes posts, received pms, etc. The username and email are now available for another account to register with. Topics containing the user's posts may no longer make sense.
  2. Hard delete, but retain posts - This removes the user account from the database, including the profile information and pms. Posts are retained but appear to be posted by anonymous (using the user's username for the guest poster, I think?)
  3. Hard delete - Same as point 1 but soft delete posts instead of hard deleting posts. This had advantages of being able to restore posts if their posts are vital to the makeup of a topic.
  4. Deactivate - Similar to facebook, the account is deactivated (reason: soft deleted, differentiates between user soft delete and admin soft delete). All posts, private messages, and PMs are retained, but posts appear to be posted by guest poster with the same username. If the user deactivated himself, he may simply log back in to reactivate his account. If the admin soft deleted him, he cannot reactivate without asking the admin to do so.
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EXreaction
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by EXreaction »

Users should not be able to permanently delete themselves and all of their records, the records may be important for administrative staff and potentially even for legal reasons.

Deactivating their accounts and removing everything from the public is enough.

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DavidIQ
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by DavidIQ »

EXreaction wrote:Users should not be able to permanently delete themselves and all of their records, the records may be important for administrative staff and potentially even for legal reasons.

Deactivating their accounts and removing everything from the public is enough.
This.
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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Pony99CA »

Atramez_Zeton wrote:
MichaelC wrote:Deactivating a user just stops them from logging in/posting if I recall correctly.
but their posts will remain, also this feature should be fixed with tagging if the user deactivated his account the tag link will go.
tagging RFC https://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopi ... 08&t=42807
In phpBB 3.0, if you deactivate a user, the user's posts will still contain the user name and avatar, but clicking the user name link will give an error page saying "The requested user does not exist." (I just tested it.)

Given that, tags should not "go" (as in "disappear" or have their links removed); the link will still be there, but also give the above message.

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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Pony99CA »

DavidIQ wrote:
EXreaction wrote:Users should not be able to permanently delete themselves and all of their records, the records may be important for administrative staff and potentially even for legal reasons.

Deactivating their accounts and removing everything from the public is enough.
This.
I agree, but you might want to allow displaying the user name as "Anonymous" or "Self-Deleted User" or something similar.

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Pony99CA
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Pony99CA »

By the way, there's a Delete My Account MOD for phpBB 3.0.11. Maybe that could be used to create a patch for this.

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Oyabun1
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Oyabun1 »

If the username is changed for a self deleted user ideally the shown username should be unique to each deleted user, something like, self-deleted_1, self-deleted_2. Otherwise, for boards that have more than one deleted user the topics my still be hard to follow, for example, if you have 2 or 3 different deleted users in a topic it could appear that someone was conversing with them self.

The current system where the “username wrote” part in quoted posts doesn't link to the username, and so isn't updated when the username changes, should also be changed. Otherwise references to the deleted user's original username may continue to exist in many posts.

If the hard delete option to delete the user and their posts in implemented it should also have the option to delete any quotes of the post from other topics as well. On some boards it is not uncommon to quote the whole of the previous post rather than using the reply button, others users may have a high proportion of their posts quoted, so a significant proportion of a user's posts may be duplicated in other posts. Just removing the original post wouldn't achieve much.

Personally, I don't think users should be given the option to delete their posts.

Atramez_Zeton
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Re: [RFC] User Self Delete

Post by Atramez_Zeton »

Oyabun1 wrote:for example, if you have 2 or 3 different deleted users in a topic it could appear that someone was conversing with them self.
what if it can be replaced with a small line or note that there has been a post which was removed, or suspended or.. whatever to show that there was something in that place?

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