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Prevent members from deleting topics that are over 3 months old?

Started by backend, October 01, 2014, 03:58:21 PM

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backend

I am in a bit of dilemma here and wondering if anyone else is in the same boat?

What do you do when a member, that has contributed so much to your website (years and years of great content) asks you to remove their account (assuming you have removed the members' ability to delete their membership themselves)?

I am talking about some content that is in some cases first on google search results and has been viewed literally tens of thousands of times.

-Do you delete their membership and leave the content? this is one solution.

I have already changed my forum 'Terms of Use' to let users know that we don't delete any account that is at least 6 months old and has at least 50 posts (reasons being SEO related, bla bla) . Instead, I told the users I can eithersuspend their account or change the user name.  But the content can't be deleted. Not to mention, when the user being deleted has started topics of importance and lots of views and replies, all the replies will have to be deleted. Don't think it is fair for these replies to be deleted, just because the topic author wants his membership deleted.

To go around this, some users have started to edit their posts and replace them with nothing but one character, since they are not able to delete them.

Now to be clear, it is not like users are leaving in masses. I probably had no more than 5 users asking me to delete their accounts in the last 6 months, but 2 of those were very active with some great content.



So here is my question: is there a way to prevent users from editing/deleting posts they have made which is older than 6 months (or any other specified time)?


How do you deal with this? Do you have a policy in place?

kat

If you delete the account, I believe that their posts get attributed to a non-existent member named "Guest".

If they delete their posts, they'll be in your recycle bin, if you created one. So, they could be restored.

Edits, you're probably stuck with.

margarett

That would require some custom coding.
I'm just thinking out loud :P but I imagine a solution in theory...
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QuoteOver 90% of all computer problems can be traced back to the interface between the keyboard and the chair

Kindred

deleting no...   however, I believe there is a setting for max edit time...
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Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

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Arantor

Deleting actually should be including max edit time into its calculation if I remember rightly.

Illori

Quote from: Arantor on October 01, 2014, 04:47:29 PM
Deleting actually should be including max edit time into its calculation if I remember rightly.

we have had issues with users deleting posts a long time after they were made. that setting just effects editing not deleting.

Arantor

If you mean here, there isn't an edit limit from what I remember, meaning the check is null and void.

So as ever I checked the code. 2.0 - RemoveTopic.php::DeleteMessage
if ($poster == $user_info['id'])
{
if (!allowedTo('delete_own'))
{
if ($starter == $user_info['id'] && !allowedTo('delete_any'))
isAllowedTo('delete_replies');
elseif (!allowedTo('delete_any'))
isAllowedTo('delete_own');
}
elseif (!allowedTo('delete_any') && ($starter != $user_info['id'] || !allowedTo('delete_replies')) && !empty($modSettings['edit_disable_time']) && $post_time + $modSettings['edit_disable_time'] * 60 < time())
fatal_lang_error('modify_post_time_passed', false);
}


If a user is trying to delete their own post, and they have permission to do so, it checks the edit time ($modSettings['edit_disable_time']).

If they have delete_any permission, the rule doesn't apply because they're deemed to be moderators, but there's an exclusion there with respect to not being able to delete their own - but able to delete replies (but that aren't theirs anyway, so acting as a quasi-moderator)

Similar check in removeMessage in the same file.

Illori

interesting, maybe something we should add to the help text and/or wiki so the admin know.

Arantor

Someone really needs to go through everything and document every behaviour because there's quite a few such interesting caveats of logic.

Illori

Quote from: Arantor on October 01, 2014, 05:17:48 PM
Someone really needs to go through everything and document every behaviour because there's quite a few such interesting caveats of logic.

i wish we had someone with the knowledge to actually do that.

Arantor

My problem on that score is simply time. It doesn't help that the codebase, sadly, doesn't practice DRY principles which would also really help on that score.

Kindred

hopefully, with 3.0 being designed from the ground up, we can correctly document this sort of thing as it is written in the code.:)
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Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Arantor


ApplianceJunk

After having one member a few years ago that contributed a lot to our site go and delete hundreds of his post one night I started use a max edit time of a few minutes.

I also use the max edit time because if someone starts a new topic and then someone replies asking them to post more info the max edit time forces them to post a reply instead of editing their original post.

I have also had just a few members over the years ask me to delete their account and all there post. I try to explain to them why we don't delete content from our site. Most of the time they understand, but if they want to get in a pissing match over it I simply band their account and leave their post. It's a I win, I win... ;)

Arantor

The alternative of course is to create a troublemaker group that isn't allowed to edit/delete posts ;)

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