Delete All of My Posts Please!

[Winner568]

& I will give you a piece of toast as your reward! =]

[iNow]

No

[Phi for All]

We don't delete anything. People put work into their posts, no matter how they're received, so at most we move the posts into the Trash. Still here, still readable, but nobody has to waste time responding to concepts that can't pass basic tests and smell like word salad. If you'd like to learn some science, I suggest you stick around and read. 

[iNow]

Lol. All 3 of them. #priorities

[raphaelh42]

I understand it is important to keep replies for the share of the knowledge...

I guess replies containing quotes of the deleted posts could hide the writer username...

I feel preventing people to get their posts deleted is like google saying : we will not remove your face from google images and your video from youtube, you can just regret now or try to assume...

I feel it is cruel even if the user account is considered anonymous

[Phi for All]

39 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

I feel preventing people to get their posts deleted is like google saying : we will not remove your face from google images and your video from youtube, you can just regret now or try to assume...

Yes, it's exactly like that. Except Google employees are paid, unlike our staff. And nobody has had any personal information or photos exposed, also no video was involved. Oh, and most of the information in the posts was self-published and is available elsewhere for free, so removing it from our threads doesn't do anything. But yeah, other than those things, it's like what you said Google says.

[joigus]

44 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

I feel it is cruel even if the user account is considered anonymous

(My emphasis.)

Oxford Learner's Dictionary:

Quote

Cruel (adjective): having a desire to cause physical or mental pain and make somebody suffer

I wouldn't call it 'cruel.'

Composing a bad song is not cruel.

Publishing a bad song is not cruel.

Keeping copies of it is not cruel.

OTOH, forcing you to listen to it over and over can be cruel. But that's not what's happening here. It happens to me every single day.

 

[raphaelh42]

i think i still don't understand why users don't have the ability to delete their messages

is it like van Gogh wouldn't be allowed to get his paints back from museums because people can get interest from them ?

is it fair ?

of course if he would have sold his paints it would be logic that it's too late, we don't sell our messages...

[iNow]

These forums rely on a threaded discussion structure.

When you start arbitrarily pulling out threads, the entire garment falls apart.

Or, in this case, the discussion stops making sense.

Conversation has PersonA, then PersonB responds, and PersonA replies, and PersonC jumps in, then PersonB posts, and PersonA replies. This keeps going on and on for days, often weeks or even months.

Deleting PersonA leaves that "conversation" looking like "PersonB no context, PersonC no context, PersonB no context."

Why does this need explaining? When creating a membership, you agree to certain rules. Also, you post voluntarily. If you're bothered by inability to delete later, then don't post. Problem solved. 

The volunteer staff here are not in place to help you try to revise your post history because at some point later on you suddenly decide you don't like it. 

[joigus]

8 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

is it like van Gogh wouldn't be allowed to get his paints back from museums because people can get interest from them ?

is it fair ?

Oh, this is a bad analogy on so many levels...

It's more like:

Somebody owns a wall. Everybody's free to write on the wall, but the wall is not yours. The rules are: You may paint on it if you want, but we reserve the right to keep anything we want. Because you can't be bothered with reading the rules, you write on the wall, and then regret what you wrote. Finally, you whine about your writing not being removed.

Whether your name is Van Gogh or Van Morrison is irrelevant.

Also, the arguments by Phi and iNow, which give you a practical reason that makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?

[Phi for All]

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

i think i still don't understand why users don't have the ability to delete their messages

I think you do, because it's been explained fairly well, and you're smart.

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

is it like van Gogh wouldn't be allowed to get his paints back from museums because people can get interest from them ?

Paintings rarely need other paintings to give them context and meaning, so no. 

In our case, individual pieces (posts, messages) are combined into a topic discussion (thread). Ideally, this creates something more than it's parts, so we can view a meaningful conversation as an emergent property of online forum discussion. It's not about the individual contributions, but without them there's no chance of discovering new meaning by talking with reasonable people. We need the discussion to be intact if we're to learn from it. Does that make sense?

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

is it fair ?

Fair? I think you're looking at this as if someone put something they owned down somewhere, and when they changed their mind and went to pick it up again, someone else tells them they aren't allowed to pick it up again and have to just leave it there. But that's not what's happening here. Putting down your thoughts is  expected of everyone here, it's a science discussion forum. 

[swansont]

2 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

i think i still don't understand why users don't have the ability to delete their messages

They gave it up when they joined the site.

From section 5 of the rules everyone agrees to:

“By posting content on ScienceForums.net, you agree to grant ScienceForums.net usage rights to that content within the confines of the site, and other members the right to quote and respond to that content”

[raphaelh42]

I agree that if you accept a rule then you shouldn't complain about it afterwards

[iNow]

30 minutes ago, raphaelh42 said:

I agree that if you accept a rule then you shouldn't complain about it afterwards

It's totally fair (and I believe often times important) to push back sometimes on some rules. That's okay.

Here, though... It's like we're co-authors on a book. You write some chapters. I write some chapters. Our friends write some other chapters, and we stitch them all together and send them off for publication.

The book goes out. People read it. Reference it. Share it. Come back and read it again later, sometimes.

Now, if several years later you say, "I want my sections of the book removed," then all of that goes away... and since you mentioned fairness earlier in another post, one might argue that THIS is truly the unfair approach.... to take your part the story away and subtract your previous contributions to the book and all while countless others are still reading it. 

[Peterkin]

You enter into a contract, attesting that you have read and understood its terms.

You do not have the option of changing the terms, or withdrawing your signature at some later date.

How can this be any more plain?

[raphaelh42]

@iNow From this point of view/seen like this, I think it would be unfair to remove your part of the book.

I thank you

Edited September 1, 2022 by raphaelh42

[iNow]

4 hours ago, raphaelh42 said:

@iNow From this point of view/seen like this, I think it would be unfair to remove your part of the book.

I thank you

My pleasure. Thank you also for being so understanding. ✌️

[Joatmon]

If you are subject to UK law I'm not sure you can refuse to remove personal information. Among the wording is 

"Make it easy for people to withdraw consent and tell them how."

I am a moderator on another site and it is for that reason we allow all data we hold on a member, including their posts, to be deleted if they so request.

[iNow]

12 minutes ago, Joatmon said:

If you are subject to UK law I'm not sure you can refuse to remove personal information

It's not personal information. It's public information.

And I'm confident that if someone accidentally shared their social security number or mothers bank account information that the staff would be happy to help them remove THAT ONE post. 

[Phi for All]

50 minutes ago, Joatmon said:

If you are subject to UK law I'm not sure you can refuse to remove personal information. Among the wording is 

"Make it easy for people to withdraw consent and tell them how."

I am a moderator on another site and it is for that reason we allow all data we hold on a member, including their posts, to be deleted if they so request.

Your part in a multi-part conversation is NOT "personal information". "Withdraw consent" refers to data normally protected by financial security measures, which we don't have. The system uses email notifications, so the most personal information we have on members is their email address. 

As for deleting member posts, please understand that we would NEVER treat your posts that way. We assume you put a great deal of effort and thought into them, just like other members do, and we understand that deleting anybody's work is a slap in the face to everyone who was part of that conversation.

[Joatmon]

I'm not a legal expert in any sense but all I know is that quotes such as follows have the owner of at least one forum worried enough to grant such requests just in case there is a post somewhere in the "conversation" that could be claimed to breach data laws:-

“‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”.

In this particular case with only three posts I can see that it is quite easy to check.  Just saying...........

 

[Phi for All]

36 minutes ago, Joatmon said:

I'm not a legal expert in any sense but all I know is that quotes such as follows have the owner of at least one forum worried enough to grant such requests just in case there is a post somewhere in the "conversation" that could be claimed to breach data laws:-

“‘personal data’ means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person (‘data subject’); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”.

In this particular case with only three posts I can see that it is quite easy to check.  Just saying...........

In cases like this, as iNow mentioned, personal information is removed when it's posted or reported, replaced with a moderator edit ("Please call me at personal information removed "), but we don't scrub the whole post. Most people posting data like that are spammers posting links as well, and when spambanned, those posts DO get deleted by the software.

Your parts of discussions can't easily be yanked from the whole. It may seem fair to an individual to have such rights, but discussion is a joint effort. If we build a tower together, is it fair to the other builders that you can remove the parts you worked on when you change your mind? 

[iNow]

It’s weird how many people conflate PII with open posts on public fora. Your posts here aren’t PII

[raphaelh42]

5 hours ago, Phi for All said:

If we build a tower together, is it fair to the other builders that you can remove the parts you worked on when you change your mind? 

I think it's a great example, i understand now, thank you