Deleting and banning accounts upon request

Just get under a desk, it’ll be fine.

1 Like

I can think of multiple occasions where it would have been ruinous to the thread to lose all posts by a single user. Think of threads where unique content drove the thread, or threads where particular people drove the conversation such that without their posts, the thread is nonsensical and impossible to show anyone why it was once a must-read. In those cases, I’d almost rather the entire thread be nuked than leave an unreadable, incoherent artifact.

afaik you can delete your own posts forever. I’ve already tested it on a 4 month old post from an unprivileged account. If people have serious privacy concerns about old posts they can address them themselves. The only current restriction is a maximum of 10 deletions per day.

And yeah, it’s the internet. It’s wide open to the entire world and all this crap is already archived in places it can never be deleted from anyway. You accept that risk when you post in a public forum. Nobody’s going to regain any meaningful anonymity by having their account deleted. The more likely result would be a Streisand effect.

So is this the Ban Me thread or is this the thread hashing our how a Ban Me thread would work if one was ever implemented?

This is the thread where you test the mods limits to see how much you can get away with before you’re banned for something totally unrelated but man does it become controversial once the community weighs in

Bump I guess. I see now that this is quite old.

What do we do when someone requests a perma, gets the 14 day and then never comes back to say they really want the perma? How long do we give them?

Also, some perma requests may be for more serious reasons than just not wanting to post here anymore. I have to say that as a mod I endeavor to follow the mod rules, but if someone were really worried about a doxxing or something in real life, especially if there were any fear of physical danger…I guess I’d break the rule and get demodded and/or banned if that were the consequence.

Didn’t know we had this, despite voting in it. It’s a very old poll.

ggoreo has an amazing memory and just reminded me of it in the log of key moderator actions thread.

If I would have known that woulda been a little easier. Maybe we need a stickied list of binding polls in the future, if we can ever agree about that.

1 Like

Can even you make the account available again?

I don’t know for sure about anonymizing. Jbro’s account is just suspended permanently and that can be undone.

Welp. If I understood what he asked for was a perma (not deletion), I’d be inclined to honor the poll result. The best thing that can happen is he comes back, and the worst is that he doesn’t. Don’t think it matters that an account is technically active if someone never posts on it.

Maybe. Thoughts anyone else? He can come back anytime. I’ve considered him a friend for 16 years and I emailed him. He hasn’t responded to that yet. I don’t think he’ll want back here within two weeks.

1 Like

There’s no difference to leaving him permabanned for two weeks and then asking him if he wants to come back, and changing the perma to a temp and then after two weeks transforming it to a perma.

I doubt he’s coming back. Those two look 100% the same, he’s still banned either way.

I’m guessing it’s possible he might return if things get sorted out here enough that the two sides understand each other to be posting in good faith.

I tried to talk him out of it but after another day of gaslighting it looks like he gave up, and I don’t blame him after many years of good faith posting.

But either way it’s just a semantic difference. He’s still banned for two weeks no matter what. We can do whatever, doesnt need to be a big deal

Still, what to do after two weeks of you don’t hear? The rule is not complete imo. Perma one day later? A week later?

Just don’t permaban. I don’t even understand what’s the point of requesting a permaban. They can just stop posting at any time they want. It’s not like Unstuck is charging inactivity fees.

1 Like

He brought up a security/liability concern that I also share. If he got hacked, the site holds him liable for the content his account posts on UP. If someone hacks him and starts trying to scam/hack/post illegal content, he’d technically be liable.

I don’t blame anyone for not wanting that.

It’s also much easier to stop posting if you take the decision out of your control. I tried limiting my time here by installing a browser extension that would block me from viewing the site once I’d hit an hour per day and I just ended up immediately removing the extension because this place is like crack to me.

6 Likes