RE: Give Maintainer Permissions to delete their own nodes?

[Ozymandias]

I don't see a problem with some limited ability to delete your own nodes. The "only if there are no replies" sounds like a good plan; there're two other conditions I'd like to see put on it, too. One would be that you can't delete the node if anyone's voted for or against it - or maybe that you have to accept a negative XP hit for doing so. The other would be a time limit; say, half an hour, or even shorter. Given those constraints, it would be useful. I know I could really have used it; my five-year -old goddaughter wanted to "play games" and submitted my Cable Modem Check node three times. Instead of harrassing vroom to delete the extras, it would have been nice to simply delete the extras and spank the child. <G>

- Ozymandias

[Kozz]

Ozymandias:
This is exactly what I had in mind. I think that probably the best way to handle allowing deletion of nodes would be check the following conditions:
• Node is less than X minutes old (5? 10?)
• There have been no replies to the node
• Node maintainer supplies reason for deletion of node
Upon meeting these conditions, a node maintainer could "mark" the node as "Please Delete" which would "hide" it from readers. Then the reason for deletion of the node could go to vroom or another administrative-monk for approval of deletion. Perhaps the admins could have a queue of "please delete" nodes. Hmm?

[Ovid]

Add to the above list "There have been no votes on the node" and I think it's a great idea. This, along with the previous three conditions basically results in a "no harm/no foul" sort of thing. Cheers!

[shagbark]

The problem with not allowing you to delete nodes that have votes on them is that the only reason to delete a node is if you realize it's a bad question, in which case it will probably already have negative votes by the time you try to delete it.

This would probably happen even if you immediately change the text to say "This is a deleted node. There is nothing here to see."

[jdporter]

... the only reason to delete a node is if you realize it's a bad question, in which case it will probably already have negative votes by the time you try to delete it.

I think you're mistaken. "Bad" questions (like the one you posted earlier) are not considered bad by the community. They're fine questions. You were just embarrassed and wanted to salve your shame. Don't worry about such things. (Btw, I'm the one who restored the node's original content, putting it inside a spoiler section. Just so you know -- we do not like people to delete their node contents, and will restore them if we deem it appropriate.)

Truly bad nodes -- those deemed to be toxic to the site -- are easily taken care of by the normal consideration and reaping process.

You've already been pointed to How do I change/delete my post?; I hope you'll read it. And definitely check out the thread linked at the bottom, why a nodelet can be kept agains author wish?. It's entertaining as well as informative.

Thanks.

[Your Mother]

"Self-deleting" a node is considered bad form so the downvotes tend to come from that far more than a "bad" question. I upvote most questions I read, to encourage participation, unless they are hostile or rude.