Member asks to have account deleted, good amount of content

[cmeinck]

On occasion, I receive a request from a member to "have their account deleted". As a forum owner, this drives me nuts. That aside, is there a way to delete their account, but not their content? In some cases, this could have pretty devastating affects on my forum content.

 

[Paul B]

Please confirm that you want to delete the following user:
John Doe
This will not remove any content this user has already created.

 

[MGSteve]

Yeah, the usual resultant action is that (in VB at least), the posts turn to 'Guest' as the author. From what Brogan says, it sounds as if XF does the same.

I agree with you though, its a pain when they do ask to be deleted. We usually reply with the line 'If you don't want to participate any more, simply close the browser and don't come back" (words to that effect). If they persist then we delete the account, but I do it as a last resort.

 

[Paul B]

The user name remains the same but it is no longer hyperlinked, and the user title changes to Guest.

 

[Blue]

I change the name to something generic, like user47, and clear all of their profile info.

 

[gordy]

On occasion, I receive a request from a member to "have their account deleted". As a forum owner, this drives me nuts. That aside, is there a way to delete their account, but not their content? In some cases, this could have pretty devastating affects on my forum content.

I never understood that mentality, don't go away mad, just go away I tell them.

I get those request once in a while too, I simply change the password deactivating the account, most of the time they want to come back.

Also, I have the edit the users own content set to 3 days so that they can't go back and delete the contents of every single post they ever made.. Before making that change I had a couple members that went years back and changed hundreds of posts.. that's a dedicated grudge LOL

I have a nightly cron that scoops the last days posts external images from 3rd party sites like photobucket, etc just in case they change or remove image folders

 

[Fufu]

How about a user can disable their account (more of like a suspene feature)?

 

[cmeinck]

How about a user can disable their account (more of like a suspene feature)?

Most of the users of this ilk want their account removed, rather than suspended. As one of the previous posters mentioned, closing their browser suspends their account. For some reason, users want to remove their existence from the web. It's odd and I don't get it. I like the suggestion to shift them to a generic profile, removing all personal information. That keeps the content in place and the ability to at a later date, associate the account with a "guest" account.

 

[MGSteve]

The user name remains the same but it is no longer hyperlinked, and the user title changes to Guest.

hmm, that may not be a good thing. We've had user requests to delete their accounts before because of the username they chose. I appreciate we could rename the account first, but it really ought to at at least have an option to reset the username as well.

 

[MGSteve]

For some reason, users want to remove their existence from the web. It's odd and I don't get it.

I have a couple of theories, its either that they have fallen out with the site / other members and they don't want anything to do with the site anymore or that they think by deleting their account, they're "damaging" the site by removing their contributions.

I like the suggestion to shift them to a generic profile, removing all personal information. That keeps the content in place and the ability to at a later date, associate the account with a "guest" account.

Yup, we've done that before now as well.

 

[Fufu]

Most of the users of this ilk want their account removed, rather than suspended. As one of the previous posters mentioned, closing their browser suspends their account. For some reason, users want to remove their existence from the web. It's odd and I don't get it. I like the suggestion to shift them to a generic profile, removing all personal information. That keeps the content in place and the ability to at a later date, associate the account with a "guest" account.

Interesting sotry I have about deleted accounts.

I deleted my MySpace account back in 2005 through techincal support. 4 years later in 2009 I registered for a facebook account. I thought I was clean from the internet, but facebook wouldn't let me register until my email address from way back in 2005 at MySpace was verified that infact it was me registering to facebook. MySpace still kept my information, even though my username and account is unusable to me. Information is soft-deleted anymore, not hard-deleted.

 

[GofD]

I don't like to ruin the continuity of discussions by removing content, so we never remove content, period (unless it's spam). Our terms state that we own the rights to content posted on our site, and as such it's our right to determine what to do with it. Six years and 180,000 members and we've never had a real issue with anyone getting terribly upset.

Generally, I change the username, clear the password, remove the email addy and any other identifying information as to who the member is/was. I tell the member that their account has been nullified and that usually is enough for them. We don't have a rancorous crowd, though so ymmv.

 

[Ray]

What I do is this:

Change username and set a new password.

The user can no longer access the account. Now, if the user wants his content removed, I remove it.

 

[Ray]

Our terms state that we own the rights to content posted on our site, and as such it's our right to determine what to do with it.

That's very dangerous, you could get sued if a user posts copyrighted content on your site(words, images, videos, etc).

 

[Blue]

If it is a nasty departure with no chance of a return I change the PW and put some numbers or caps in their email address so the PW can't be reset. Put the account into a usergroup named retired that doesn't show in the memberlist and finally make notes who, what, why.

 

[dutchbb]

What we do if a users asks this is just change their username to 'ano_1980' and add them to banned members. Most of them are happy with that, some ask for certain private content to be removed. You do not have to remove any other content according to the law AFAIK.

 

[GofD]

That's very dangerous, you could get sued if a user posts copyrighted content on your site(words, images, videos, etc).

We also have terms stating that no copyrighted material should be posted and it's removed immediately if found. We're pretty well covered.