Disable Account Delete

I do not agree. Most people want to delete your account easily and forever when they get bored of a service or social network. Nobody want their personal information is in a database forever!

I don't think anyone puts their personal info on a forum. Most forums are just ways to express oneself without the use of personal data that's why they want othet venues than social media that require personal information.

I agree with this suggestion. I've been on some crazy forums where people get in a massive flame wars and vow to never return to the forums. Then 3 days later they're back.

An admin approval system sounds like the best route, for people that sincerely want to leave.

Only admin should have permanent deletion power. User should be able to remove their accounts from public. Otherwise, post should stay as they are, since they are part of discussion flow.

Dominion , well, they should've thought of the consequences when they posted

Function to permanent deletion is not important for this case, But rather to remove all spambots and it's posts or other trolls we don't have either on forum or in DB as junk. But as I said, it should be ADMIN thing to do total erase.

Personally, I don't like it if I couldn't delete my own account on a website. It's MY account, not theirs.

I still can't grasp your arguments not to allow users to delete their own account.
It won't magically solve any flame wars problem inside our forum, right?

If that particular person is a dick, he wouldn't care whether he can or can't delete his account...he'll just create another one.

Now imagine if someone's getting bullied by the other members because he made a mistake -- if he's embarassed by it.
If I'm in that situation, I obviously want to delete all my posts and my account.

amdad Function to permanent deletion is not important for this case

I agree; the part you quoted was replying to the comments dehbuff more than anything.

Darmawan I still can't grasp your arguments not to allow users to delete their own account.

I think that's because you're assuming that our use cases are the same as yours. I set up my forums as a venue for important business discussions among our company's staff members. If there's a chance that one of our staff could decide to nuke her account (whether out of spite, or just to see what that button does) and thereby leave gaping holes in conversations that need to remain intact to be useful to our business activities, then yes, I'd really like to be able to prevent that.

(I'm assuming here that account deletion would result in posts being deleted; I'm not at all sure that's the case, and I'm not willing to try it out with my account.)

It would be best if admins had the option of disabling the account deletion function entirely. After all, while it may be YOUR account, it's on THEIR site. You can create an account and post on their site because they chose to let you do so; why should deletion be any different?

I'd say account deletion should be possible for users. They should be able to own their own data (not their posts, they made those public). As far as deletion of posts on user account removal is concerned, that should either not be possible (for the reasons mentioned above) or at least disabled by default.

Dominion I think that's because you're assuming that our use cases are the same as yours.

Well I'm responding to OP's post so I think our case is similar

[deleted] What happens to the data, Google ranking?

From SEO perspective, 404 pages doesn't have any bad impact to your ranking. http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/05/do-404s-hurt-my-site.html

Sure it's bad from user perspective because people tend to leave when they found a 404 page. But like Toby said, deleted account username will be replaced with text [deleted] so 99% links to their account will also be removed.

There's also the issue of data retention, certain legal obligations may require you be able to name and shame the creator of any content. If a post is made and then the user quickly deleted, the relationship might not be captured in any backup, and depending on how user deletions are handled they may be irrecoverable. This paper has a wonderful chart on this https://www.watsonhall.uk/resources/downloads/paper-uk-data-retention-requirements.pdf

I personally think this should be a setting, I do not want my users randomly deleting themselves and then all of the posts suddenly come up as "Deleted" - it just hurts the overall image of a forum. And the reasoning behind why a member would delete themselves differs greatly, it might not even have to do with the forum. I don't want to look back on a thread from a year ago and suddenly see that all the posts have this "Deleted" on it - if they don't want the account, they just stop using it. It's pretty simple.

That and it can hurt many legal situations as well, because you cannot sue someone that has no account. You can however sue someone with an account, because that data can be traced back, whereas if they delete themselves, you are screwed.

One situation we've discussed on my forum recently is allowing account deletions. We decided that the best solution would be to let users do as they wish with their own credentials and contact information, but retain posts and replies. Another issue is if a user deletes their account, is the username then automatically released for another user to claim? Because this could be a very bad thing. Essentially someone could take the deleted users identity and use it to gain the trust of other forum users who perhaps knew the now deleted member, or post from their name to slander or ridicule them. If users could delete their accounts, but leave their posts and not automatically release the username to be claimed again, that would be fine.

This is a very serious matter that could determine the success or failure of the community. I know every situation is different and everyone wants a specific forum for their community. Personally speaking I plan a political forum with this software and many rival countries will be created. There is no age limit but I prefer over 17.

From past experiences I know people get very involved and many times say things they regret. They used to request their post be deleted or simply they do edit before someone else quotes them.

The delete option should be a plugin and not standard. They should be however able to disable in case they are busy and plan to return like Facebook.

OK, fair enough. I guess we'll make account self-deletion a configurable permission.

micbr Another issue is if a user deletes their account, is the username then automatically released for another user to claim? Because this could be a very bad thing. Essentially someone could take the deleted users identity and use it to gain the trust of other forum users who perhaps knew the now deleted member, or post from their name to slander or ridicule them.

IMO, if a user is worried about that, then they shouldn't delete their account.

Toby IMO, if a user is worried about that, then they shouldn't delete their account.

true that

I'm not worried about whether the user is concerned about it or not, I'm worried about the work that creates for moderators and other community members when they inevitably have to go cleaning up after it. Having someone step into the identity of an existing or established member creates issues for more than just the member that deleted their account from a trust perspective. Buyer / Seller feedback in a discussion forum with a trading element would be compromised if a user claimed the username of a member with good feedback and scammed members that were unaware the person behind the name had since changed. A technical forum with a resident in-house expert could find someone stepping into the name the previous user once held and offering bad advice.

I know these are outside chances at best. I suppose I happen to run a community that finds itself running into these outside chances more often than others. This isn't to say I'm opposed to account deletion, I just would prefer that user name or identity isn't immediately released to be reclaimed by others.

This is only a thought, not a request, there's already enough to do without adding further headaches for the development team. I just wanted to offer a different perspective into the conversation.