Submitted by An_Old_Big_Tree in meta (edited )

They don’t actually exist in a complete way. All that’s been done before is all the posts and comments (one by one) and the user bio are deleted, and the username and password of the user are changed. Though the retired account is not accessible to anyone except an admin, there is currently no way I know of to delete personal messages, which would be the last substantive remains of any account.

(it would be great if someone who knows how to code could fix this problem. Giving admins a “delete account” button that does all the work would be fantastic. Probably better would be giving the option to users. The only problem there is that trolls would delete shared accounts, so it might need to be a removable option)

Unless the other admins are willing to do the work, I’m also going to say that I’m not really interested in deleting other people’s comments and posts individually whenever they ask for an account deletion. So unless the admins say so, I think a change to the ToS is on the horizon.

(some people have asked me recently to delete their accounts, I will still do it for those people, insofar as it’s actually possible)

Thoughts/comments welcome.

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ziq wrote

Let them delete their own friggin comments. I wasted so many hours of my life deleting people's comments for them.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Something that always annoyed me is that people can delete entire threads and wipe out everyone else's comments in those threads. They should only be able to delete their own OP and comments; not everyone else's comments in the thread. The title of the thread and OP post should be edited to [deleted], but the comments inside that don't belong to OP should remain intact.

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retiredshared2 wrote

Personally, I feel that as something disappears all related content should follow, else you could reasonably piece together something that was presumably deleted for a reason, especially by using blockquotes.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq wrote

people can delete the entire post, wiping out all parent and child comments.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Here's a delete script Bea made. Anyone can use it to delete their entire post history so you don't need to bother admins with it any more:

https://pastebin.com/a6p3517w

IP addresses are only stored for 24 hours (not stored at all if the user has been marked 'trusted') so the posts / comments are the only data that needs to be deleted.

On reddit you can't even delete your data, just hide it. The reddit admins / law enforcement can still see everything you ever posted and all your IPs.

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

This is great, though I wouldn't know how to use it. Might be good if we had a wiki with the code and explaining how to use it.

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ziq wrote (edited )

w/delete_post_history

  1. log out of your account

  2. make a test account, log into it

  3. post some test comments/posts

  4. press F12 (in firefox)

  5. click 'Console'

  6. paste the code

  7. press enter

  8. when prompted for the user to delete, write the account's username

Just tested it, it works.

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ziq wrote (edited )

One more thing, if an admin does need to delete a user's post history, you should change their password and log into their account to do it (instead of using your admin account). That way the moderation log won't be spammed with thousands of useless entries and you won't risk doing something wrong and wiping your own post history.

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retiredshared2 wrote

I wonder why everyone is suddenly deleting their accounts....

Hmmmmmm

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An_Old_Big_Tree OP wrote

People are always asking for their accounts to be deleted, there isn't a particularly high volume relative to any other time I've been an admin. In recent cases, some people have chosen to continue to use Raddle, just limiting themselves to SharedLogins.

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retiredshared2 wrote

Or maybe it's because all you admins are proud primmies?

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ziq wrote

Are you doing an impression of me doing an impression of a transhumanist to make drama or are you actually this lacking in self awareness?

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