Re^2: The ability to delete

[kiat]

Hi herveus,

A user is able to edit her post after she has gained a certain number of xp's, including deleting the entire content of the post, leaving an empty slot. Since she can be "trusted" to edit her post responsibly, it puzzles me that the same person can't be trusted to delete her post responsibly.

[Joost]

Your making the assumption that emptying a node is responsible behaviour. It is not.

Considering a writeup for being a duplicate will usually result in a fairly quick deletion, If the author has other reasons for wishing the post to be retracted, they'd better be very good - IMO it's usually better to update the node (by adding a statement, crossing out lines, whatever) than clearing it out or deleting it.

[kiat]

I think you might have misread my post above. I don't think I implied that "emptying a node is a responsible behaviour". What I said was, when you give the user the power to edit, you're potentially giving her the power to remove the entire content of the post - not deleting the post and making the node (id) disappear but emptying its content. So the question is, why empower the person to potentially remove a post's entire content and yet not allowing her to delete it?

[Joost]

I know what you meant, but it's a question of perspective: if the ability to edit a node comes with the assumption you won't remove the content (because that's not responsible behaviour), why add the ability to remove the node?

The only reason to use it would be an accidental double-posting. It's possible to prevent most of those programmatically and I think that would be more productive than adding a delete button that in effect should only be used for just that occasion.

[spiritway]

I think that if you removed the content of your post, it would be restored in most cases. I have encountered instance where someone wished to recant an opinion or some statement, requested that the post be deleted, and was turned down. The explanation was that our posts are part of the Monastery's history, and it's not good to try to rewrite history.

The only times I've seen actual "deletions" is when someone posts blatantly offensive text, or when it's a duplicate. Even then, you can access the original text if you care to - it's only moved to a less conspicuous place.