Meta: How should LW account deletion work?

matt

At 2011-04-08 LW user account deletion is broken. We (Trike) will fix it… but how should it work?

Options:

Easy complete deletion: At the click of a button you can remove your account, all of your posts, and all of your comments. It's just that easy to scrub your activity from the site.
Delete = Disable account: The account deletion process removes your ability to log in and your user page. Your posts and comments remain. (You get warned that you're about to lose the ability to change anything you've previously posted and that your username will continue to be associated with your previous account activity.) Actually deleting everything requires you to do it manually.

I favour 2 (Delete = Disable account). Poking a hole into all of the conversations you've been a part of should be hard - it reduces the quality of the site's archive.

I've made three comments below: "VOTE: Easy complete deletion", "VOTE: Delete = Disable account", and "VOTE: Karma balance". What do y'reckon?

(Detail - Under the Delete = Disable account option: Your username would continue to be unavailable to others. Your user account page would be replaced with a "User account deleted" page. Your old account activity would remain and link back to the "Account deleted" page.)

At 2011-04-08 LW user account deletion is broken. We (Trike) will fix it… but how should it work?

Options:

Easy complete deletion: At the click of a button you can remove your account, all of your posts, and all of your comments. It's just that easy to scrub your activity from the site.
Delete = Disable account: The account deletion process removes your ability to log in and your user page. Your posts and comments remain. (You get warned that you're about to lose the ability to change anything you've previously posted and that your username will continue to be associated with your previous account activity.) Actually deleting everything requires you to do it manually.

I favour 2 (Delete = Disable account). Poking a hole into all of the conversations you've been a part of should be hard - it reduces the quality of the site's archive.

I've made three comments below: "VOTE: Easy complete deletion", "VOTE: Delete = Disable account", and "VOTE: Karma balance". What do y'reckon?

My vote was for disabling, but I think this should also change your username to something suitably anonymous (like "Account deleted").

This. In fact you should still be able to login and edit, in case you put specific private info in a comment you want to delete. Just your display name should change to (Account deleted).

7gjm15y

Except that deleted accounts should all have different deleted-account usernames, so that if some unfortunate thread has two participants who later delete their accounts it doesn't become completely impossible to make sense of the discussion.

0[anonymous]15y

Agreed.