Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » Topic Deletion Button

Does anyone else notice all the topics that are just being left in the sections that say "please delete" or "moved to different forum"? Well I propose a button that will delete the forum. It could have the same concept as the character deletion button, where you have to put in your password before being able to delete the character except it would be for the forums.

I've been thinking this would be nice for awhile. I also figured it had to be an obvious enough feature that it had to have been brought up and turned down for some reason... but I'd still be for the ability to delete one's own posts and topics.

Yea it would be useful but it may be a theory if other people may be able to do it and things could get a bit troublesome. I think their should be one to free up space on the site and get rid of old or unwanted threads.

This feature has been deliberately left out since the beginning to avoid abuse. If people were to be able to delete their own topics or posts, it could create a lot of confusion and it would make it really difficult for moderators to stay on top of things.

What if people started breaking the rules in replies on a topic, and then the OP deleted the topic? There'd be no way to go back for it and see who did what. (It's also not realistic to have the deleted topics moved into a review queue for deletion or an archive forum, that's a hugely unnecessary workload for the mods in my opinion.) There are a bunch of similar reasons that will never make this a user-end feature. And I like it, because I'm 100% convinced this has prevented a crapton of issues in the past.

If you see a topic that requests deletion (or you want one deleted yourself), use the "Report" button. The moderators will see it and they will decide if it needs to be deleted or not. Making the title "please delete this" is also not the right way to do it, because nobody actively browses the forum to look for these topics. So reporting them is super helpful to the mods.

Generally speaking, a topic or post is not deleted by moderators if it will disrupt the conversation going on/there are already many replies to the topic. This is often because other people may want to refer back to their post at some point, especially during (idea) discussions and so forth. If it's an empty topic or a double post, that's usually fine and they'll delete it.

Well I certainly see your point Sanne.

Also want to mention that I've looked at old topics dozens of times for the very reason I needed information from them. A part of me will die if old topics get cleaned up forever.

Huh. I never realized how much of a problem it would be. 0-0 Or well could be.

Sanne is correct: This is a deliberate omission to make life easier for moderators, to make people think before they open their mouths, and to prevent non-malicious information loss by those surprisingly non-rare OCD users who obsessively clean up their own topics when they've gotten their question answered, preventing anyone else who needed useful info that was posted in that topic from ever getting it again.

We've had some community *disasters* wherein owners of groups decided they didn't want the group anymore, like a group that hadn't been posted in awhile, and they "clean it up" without thinking of it, trashing all of the old RPs in those groups. Even though they might not have currently been in use, the backlash for me with people screaming they want their old RPs to be dug out of backups can be huge. Some people like being able to go back and reference old info, conversations or RPs. Others don't. Most assume others hold similar feelings (whether that's strong or apathy) as themselves. When the two meet it can be kind of explosive.

Obviously it's silly for us to force people to have to continue being in charge of groups they no longer want to own for any reason, so there's a certain amount of buyer beware when you join someone's group in that they are the judge and jury for the postings there living or dying. But we can at least dodge this issue with the public forums.

Moderators have permission to delete a "please delete this" type topic if they judge the topic to have no potential future value. If the OP changes their first post but there are still a dozen wonderful conversational/informational gems in the replies, we tend to err on the side of information preservation for the sake of everyone else involved.

I'll add: Some forums take this a step further and prevent editing of any kind after a certain time has passed, say about ten minutes, for the purposes of information preservation, making sure that conversations continue to make sense when read back in the future, and preventing people from covering their tracks if they do something dickish late at night when a mod isn't around to see it instantly. I've occasionally considered implementing some similar limit, though I think it's not yet necessary for us.