Let users download backups of their entire posting history.

[JJ1]

This needs to become a native feature like it is in Discourse. Volunteer contributors spend many hours contributing their knowledge, even though websites can and do often shut down. For this reason, every user should be able to download an archive containing their entire posting history without having to manually scrape it. The archive should also include direct messages.

This would be something similar to Google Takeout (takeout.google.com). Reddit also has something like this (reddit.com/settings/data-request).
Just as you should have a backup of your computer, you should also have a backup of your Internet contributions.

 

[QuackieMackie]

I’d like to see this feature. But I’d be worried about the stress this could cause on a database if a high volume poster chooses to export their posts repeatedly.

A better approach could be admins getting the option to set a time frame for these queries to be made. Say for example the admin set the setting for this to 15 mins, over the cause of that 15 mins after the user clicks export, a file would be created and queries would slowly be made.

Or just a time delay forcing users to only be able to perform this function every x mins.

I’m sure this can be done by an add on, but this would be amazing as a built in function.