This topic contains 10 replies, has 6 voices, and was last updated by 
Team Black-Cat 16 years, 7 months ago.
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I would like to see a person have the ability to delete their posts or entire topic they created. Why? Pick any number of reasons..as IT guy…space is one.
thanks
Oh, that could cause alot of havoc in the Thread Stealers FTP wars. 😆
Disclaimer : Always answering to a higher power.
10 or 15 years ago when drive space was still over $1/MB, it may have been a concern. I can’t see the forums taking up that much space by today’s standard. I’m sure our most excellent web master will correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess the entire text of the forums since the board started would fit on a single USB “zip” drive.
Just curious, what other reasons might there be to delete a post or topic?
Lots of drawn out hash and re-hash of a topic and it gets into a pissing match and everyone’s shoes are then wet and stinky.
@rsplash40 wrote:
Lots of drawn out hash and re-hash of a topic and it gets into a pissing match and everyone’s shoes are then wet and stinky.
Whether it is deleted or not, as long as we have opinions we will rehash the same old arguments.
That would be all the more reason to leave them. If the original “hash” is deleted, it just creates the oppertunity to post it again… And deleting a thread won’t clean anyone’s shoes.
For good or bad, the discussions in these forums are an historical record. I don’t mean to over-state the importance of any of this but deleting a thread would be akin to revisionist history.
@rsplash40 wrote:
I would like to see a person have the ability to delete their posts or entire topic they created. Why? Pick any number of reasons..as IT guy…space is one.
thanks
There is the technical ability to allow members to delete posts. Currently this function is turned off, on purpose.
This was discussed a long time ago by the board, and my fuzzy recollection is that the rationale was that in forums where folks know they can delete their posts, cheap shots and flame wars are more likely to break out.
I am not sure that is true, but that was the thinking. I dont think it is a big deal either way, so if there are good reasons to allow that function, it could be changed, and personally, I would be open to it. I guess you would have to come up with a convincing rationale to get the board to consider a change.
zuma
We actually (in the early days, using the old Ultimate Bulletin Board (UBB) software) used to allow folks to delete their own posts. The Board back then voted to restrict this for a couple reasons:
– “Trolls” would post something controversial in nature, create a “flame war”, and then delete their own post(s) to cover their tracks. With that software they also had the ability to remove an entire topic they started which would also eliminate any posts other people had made in that topic.
– Some people didn’t like what they had posted so deleted things days or weeks after the fact, or were neat freaks and cleaned up after themselves. This left gaps in discussion threads that made reading and understanding them difficult… as sometimes you only had part of the “conversation”.
@Team Black-Cat wrote:
10 or 15 years ago when drive space was still over $1/MB, it may have been a concern. I can’t see the forums taking up that much space by today’s standard. I’m sure our most excellent web master will correct me if I’m wrong, but I would guess the entire text of the forums since the board started would fit on a single USB “zip” drive.
As far as the posts taking up space… the entire WGA “main” database is currently only 300 MB. This is the text of every forum post ever made, all the user/membership data, and all the data in almost every module (COTM, LCG, Wiki, etc.)… though certain things like the store, Cache Rescue, and election information are contained in separate databases. So yes, I’d say storage of WGA forum posts in perpetuity is a non-issue.
If anything, I’d only consider allowing deletion for a short period of time after a post is made. We already allow editing a post up to one hour after a post is made. IMHO, you should have less time to delete, like 5 minutes, just to allow people to remove double posts that sometimes happen when folks click the submit button twice or when something is accidentally posted in the wrong forum. But since the double and misplaced posts happen so infrequently and are easy for admins to clean/correct, leaving things alone would also be OK by me.
Plus I think not having the ability to delete posts keeps some people who might be prone to attacking / quarreling with others on their best behavior. You can’t undo or unsay things in real life, so I think it is only fair that you can’t undo posts here either.
– “Trolls”
I can understand that, see notes below on behavior
-neat freaks
That would be me, being that this isn’t a technical forum or something I can financially gain from(in fact just the opposite) having historical data here is meaningless to me after a period of time.
-300 MB.
In my world, both professional and personal, this is still a lot and could easily see restrictions put on by whomever hosts this. You can’t always throw disk at the problem so being pro-active would be a good thing. But I don’t host it so I guess its not my problem.
-We already allow editing a post up to one hour after a post is made.
Didn’t know we were restricted to a hour, interesting, going to have to speed up my thinking if I intend to stay active on these boards.
– IMHO, you should have less time to delete, like 5 minutes…leaving things alone would also be OK by me
I think it should be all or nothing (prefer all of course or wouldn’t have started this thread), my only middle ground would be that if I started the thread (like this one) I would like the option to delete it at any time.
– others on their best behavior.
While the majority here are adults, unfortunately we don’t always act as such. Once read that only 10% of the message is actually delivered when its done in a email or posting, no body movement, voice inflections, etc makes it wide open to misinterpretation.
-You can’t undo or unsay things in real life, so I think it is only fair that you can’t undo posts here either.
I agree you can’t un-something IRL, and you always have a memory(or are lucky like me and forget easily), however I think getting rid of the physical “evidence” is the best thing for everyone to start moving forward.
But like TBC said, it could be reposted…
I can see both sides of the fence here, maybe the solution is just to make me a admin so I can delete my own stuff 😈
@Team Black-Cat wrote:
That would be all the more reason to leave them. If the original “hash” is deleted, it just creates the oppertunity to post it again… And deleting a thread won’t clean anyone’s shoes.
For good or bad, the discussions in these forums are an historical record. I don’t mean to over-state the importance of any of this but deleting a thread would be akin to revisionist history.
I can understand why you posted this, and can agree that it leaves it open for reposting. Actually had to look up revisionist history to make sure I was thinking the right definition of it.
I guess it boils down to my thoughts stated earlier, having historical data here is meaningless to me after a period of time, moving forward is important and physical evidence prevents that(it would help clean my shoes for starters).
So deleting would be a bonus for me in several ways, maybe not for others.
Revisionist history wasn’t the exact term I was looking for, but you get my drift.
Once in a while I like to go back and read threads that were going on before I was a WGA member. If certain threads or posts were deleted ad hoc, I wouldn’t get the complete picture. Even the P&Ming, as unpleasant as it might be, has in some way shaped the way things are.
Like I said before, the world wouldn’t stop if our petty posts were deleted, but it just doesn’t feel right to me.
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