You're looking at Less Wrong's discussion board. This includes all posts, including those that haven't been promoted to the front page yet. For more information, see About Less Wrong.

matt comments on Meta: How should LW account deletion work? - Less Wrong Discussion

10 Post author: matt 08 April 2011 02:41AM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (50)

Comments (50)

Sort By: Best

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: matt comment score below threshold [+] (5 children)

Comment author: Alicorn 08 April 2011 03:06:20AM 9 points [-]

Would this allow a restoration option (within some window of time, perhaps) if it were somehow done by mistake?

Comment author: cousin_it 08 April 2011 08:48:38AM * 1 point [-]

Seconding this suggestion. The effects of deletion should be seen immediately (everything you wrote becomes invisible), but the action should remain undoable for 20 days or so.

Comment author: jwhendy 08 April 2011 06:04:25AM * 3 points [-]

What about some sort of a "waiting period"? I agree that having this as the default or even one of the options might make this too easy... but what if you could request it, and the system would start some sort of timer, allowing the option to be granted, say, after a month.

This way, you can't just hit the "wipe" button without having to go through the waiting period.

Actually... after typing this suggestion, I guess I don't see why if someone really, really wants their stuff eradicated... they shouldn't have to go do it themselves. I just have a hard time envisioning what could be that bad here, even though it has come up. I'm still going to leave the suggestion as it stands. It's an idea.

Comment author: wedrifid 08 April 2011 07:13:36AM 1 point [-]

Actually... after typing this suggestion, I guess I don't see why if someone really, really wants their stuff eradicated... they shouldn't have to go do it themselves. I just have a hard time envisioning what could be that bad here, even though it has come up.

I could see why Roko deleted his entire account when he did. And I expect the experience of clicking each comment individually was cathartic!

I'm trying to estimate how long it would take me to delete all of my comments manually. I'm thinking in the order of 4 or so hours. A LOT of text would be gone! On the other hand writing a bot that would refresh my user page and click every delete/confirm would take about 15 minutes. :)

Comment author: jwhendy 08 April 2011 01:19:19PM 0 points [-]

Indeed, and after seeing the comment to that effect, I realized how much superior that proposal was. Everyone is happy -- comments stay put, no insane hand-work is required, and there's no tracking the person to their old content.

In rethinking about it again due to your comment, I agree that there's no way I could mean what I said with respect to someone (like yourself) with a huuuge amount of content. For someone who made an "oops" and posted some stuff without thinking about a good user name, perhaps it was a reasonsable suggestion.

I didn't think through all of the situations in which someone would want to remove an account, and should have done so.

The suggestion for a simple change of username is wonderful.

matt comments on Meta: How should LW account deletion work? - Less Wrong Discussion

Article Navigation

Comments (50)

Nearest Meetups

Virtual Study Room

Recent Comments

Recent Posts

Recent Open Threads

Recent Rationality Diaries

Recent Wiki Edits

Top Contributors, 30 Days

Recent Karma Awards

Comments (50)

Top Contributors, 30 Days

You'll need to login or register to do that

(Don't worry, it only takes a few seconds)

Create

Login