Alicorn comments on So, I guess the site redesign is live? - Less Wrong

18 Post author: CronoDAS 22 June 2011 04:51AM

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Comment author: matt 22 June 2011 06:55:37PM 1 point [-]

You can retract, and you can edit. We thought we'd left the important powers intact.
Easy deletion breaks the old conversation. Retraction shows that you've changed your mind. If you really want to hide your previous comment, edit it.

Am I missing an important power?

Comment author: Alicorn 23 June 2011 05:58:05AM *  12 points [-]

Retraction-with-the-strikethrough is like divorce to deletion's annulment. When I delete comments, here are some motives not addressed by retraction:

  • I got simuposted by someone whose comment was similar and as good or better, and want to quietly remove the excess without leaving any clutter. (Or, I double-posted myself.)

  • I realize that I said something really, really stupid and don't want to admit to having said anything in the first place.

  • The only reply to my comment is from a source I don't want to interact and I wish to remove myself from the thread, rather than being tempted to abuse mod powers for the purpose of not interacting with the source.

  • I haven't actually changed my mind, but I decided that I didn't want to air the contents of the comment in a public forum, or someone else complained of a privacy violation; I don't want to draw attention to there ever having been a comment in the relevant location.

It's possible that comments with children, especially with several children, should exhibit more limited behaviors than those without; but the retraction/editing options are not sufficient.

Comment author: Armok_GoB 23 June 2011 02:01:57PM 3 points [-]

The second one there is why I'd like deletion back, or at least the ability to make a post anonymous. My sanity and intelligence has a lot of time variance.

Comment author: matt 24 June 2011 12:44:26AM 2 points [-]

That sounds like a fairly strong argument for restoring deletion of comments without children.

I hear you on the rest. If we restore delete for childless comments but leave it out for comments with children, I think we're balancing the cost to others of the broken conversation vs the ability to pretend you never spoke - your remaining edit ability means you can remove everything but the trace showing that you once spoke.
I'm not sure how to make that decision, but am inclined to bow to public opinion. Can you see if you can raise some evidence for me that the community prefers one over the other?

Comment author: Vladimir_Nesov 24 June 2011 10:05:59AM 1 point [-]

If we restore delete for childless comments but leave it out for comments with children

Sounds good, except there's that nasty race condition.

Comment author: Alicorn 24 June 2011 12:53:17AM 1 point [-]

Was a poll feature added somewhere that I haven't run into yet, or shall I do it the old-fashioned way?

Comment author: matt 24 June 2011 01:48:26AM 0 points [-]

A poll feature is still planned but not scheduled. The old-fashioned way still works.
Thanks.