I must have missed that thread. That is a shame.
Yes, it is a shame and it has happened before. Trimble only loosely moderates this forum, it relies on us users to flag posts that are inappropriate and/or personally offensive. It’s a difficult call as what offends one person may seem innocuous to others, but we must do our best.
While I’ll miss @denisroy, it’s his choice - and only his choice - if he wants to wipe things he’s posted as part of his withdrawal.
My beef is with Discourse: EVERY reply or topic he deletes gets marked as edited - and shows up near the top of my “Latest” screen in Bold - meaning I haven’t read anything altered since I last looked at the thread. Thus, when Denis deleted a really old post in a long forgotten thread, I end up spending time taking a fresh look at it!
Yes. I could mute Denis - which (in theory) will keep Discourse from flagging old threads where the only change is one Denis made overtaken by experimentation - see Denisroy ...anything? - #13 by sjdorst - but I don’t want to mute him! There are plenty of threads still out there where he hasn’t (yet) deleted a valuable contribution. Also, I don’t want to miss his posts should he decide to return!
@denisroy, it’s your business if you’re going to go through and edit every thread you’ve ever participated in. Your actions, however, are bringing the old threads to the top. It’s not possible to tell whether it’s you deleting your comments or someone else who actually needs help. Opening these threads becomes a colossal waste of my time and I expect that of others who are still trying to assist other users. So I ask you, please let us know when you’ve finished. We can go off and do something useful in the meantime. Thank you.
Well.
Denis contacted me via PM after I posted above suggesting I go ahead and mute him. I did.
Unfortunately, Discourse continues to re-bold topics for me where the only change is a denisroy deleted reply.
similar to the 3D warehouse, by providing content to a service the right to use this content is provided to the operator of this service too, i.e. the user cannot claim to have the content removed.
If the operator of the service generously provides the editing of posts without any time limit (which most don’t), users should not use this for destructive purposes.
posting to a forum implies this but should be added explicitly to the TOS anyhow.
regardless of this, why not simply close the account and leave.
How do you come to this conclusion? I’m on quite a few forums. None of them claim that you can’t remove stuff you’ve added. Twitter lets you delete tweets, or take your account private, or close your account. Facebook and Google+ allow you to do the same with different mechanisms. I participate in other, more specialized forums. On some of them, the hosting software isn’t mature enough to allow self deletion of user generated content - but all of these will, on request, remove anything on request. None have TOS that prevent it.
Not for me to answer. If Denis chooses to share his reasons, we’ll know. If not, we wont.
I didn’t say/meant that users cannot delete their stuff if technically possible but that there is no right to claim this by the operator of the service… which is especially useful if an user editing of posts is disabled after a certain time (to avoid e.g. spamming later on) sothat the operator would have to do this.
anyhow.
I responded to Denis but will also reconfirm here. The inability to bulk delete posts is actually a design decision on the part of Discourse for the exact reasons it’s proving to be a pain here; there will now be confusing holes in the community and dead links from existing posts. While we certainly can’t and won’t prevent someone from removing content they’ve added, I would prefer that we find an way to talk it reaches that point so that the information which has been shared won’t disappear and devalue the entire community.
I’m sorry you’ve become so frustrated that you feel this is necessary @denisroy but hope this won’t be the last we see of you, and that you’ll reconsider the decision to remove these valuable posts you’ve added to the community since you joined the community.
Everyone else, please respect his decision and avoid making this thread or any other into an attack on him or the community.
Thanks!
You can create a complicated retreat plan, but this behaviour remains a slap in the face of diligent helpers in the forum.
I recall denisroy saying:
"Thank you Jody.
Now… For those not wanting to have to go through old posts that will emerge to see if anybody needs help, I’ve put back an avatar icon on my profile so if you see this that I am the most recent poster:
You’ll know not to bother.
I’ll try to cluster them together by being as swift as I can. The limit seems to be around 15/day so I expect everything to be over within 10 days.
Once again, I sincerly apologize to all for the inconvenience.
Best wishes
Your memory must be failing, old Sage!
Here’s what I said:
Thank you Jody.
Now… is the time.
don’t forget to wipe this post too * scnr *
I just spent over an hour making edits to multiple replies of mine in the Brainstorm idea of a “negative space” component thread.
There were three types of edit:
- Edits where I replaced a post of mine completely, explaining that they made no sense without being able to see the idea to which I was responding.
- Edits where I could paraphrase what he removed so that the rest of the post made sense.
- Edits to apologize for the absence of information helpful (but not essential) to my reply.
I’m sure many of us have similar long threads with contributions from him that need similar editing to eliminate replies that, by his removal of his contribution, now are confusing or outright nonsense!
Actions have consequences Denis. Deletion of valuable contributions in this case has already cost me at least an hour of my time cleaning up a single thread. When I’m doing consulting work (not related to SketchUp), I charge $120/hour. Where can I send the bill?
Sorry to dig up old bones but I must somehow have missed this thread after about the first 4 posts.
It seems to me a bad idea to allow this type of deletion. I would like to see deleted posts show hidden, but still give users the option to view them, as some other forums do.
Kind of like this:
Deleted Post
This is a post with content that has been deleted by the contributor. It is collapsed but still available to view.
This would force users wanting to destroy posts, to manually edit/remove the relevant text first (maintaining the required minimum characters).
It would also be nice to have rules limiting the amount of deletions, with new posts being required before additional deletion rights would be granted. I understand the necessity of allowing deletions and editing, but this type of mass deletion should be made even more difficult.
this particular episode decimated quite a lot of useful threads, and a strategy should be inplace to avoid reoccurrence…
the former ‘time limit’ on edit’s was removed to allow updating of links, maybe it should be reinstated…
the ability to disappear gracefully could be aided with a user name change feature…
i.e. changing your username to ‘anonymous’ or ‘former member’ could re-tag all your posts and void your membership…
if wanting to re-join at some point, using @formermember@old_name could reinstate the membership but not editing access to old post’s…
john
proposing enhancements concerning post edits/deletions here doesn’t help much if the used forum software (= ‘Discourse’) doesn’t offer a corresponding functionality… with a post edit time limit (default 86400 mins. ~ 2 months) already available (and activated in those days):
A decent time limit to avoid bulk edits/deletions up to the very first beginning seems to be an appropriate measure without restricting the ‘normal’ forum usage to much if at all.