To let everyone know what the forum policy is on deleting your own posts, here is a clarification. The software has a policy that allows users to delete messages that are arbitrarily old, with a certain daily limit. But deleting all of your past messages will cause previous discussions to have large holes in them which in some cases will make it difficult to follow. So, we ask that you not delete large numbers of your past messages. Any user that wants to dissociate themselves from the forum can instead request that their old posts be anonymized, which will delete their account and cause the author of their posts to change to an anonymous identity.
I don’t want to have a debate about this policy but you are welcome to message any comments to the admins.
Once I got angry on another forum, because they were not enforcing any policy or rules, and we were suffering for it, I went and deleted every post I ever made on there, and every thread that I deleted one or more post from was confusing, I also regret deleting well over 100 posts, from that forum.
What is the software limit (time or number?) on post changes. I have tried to compile list in the past, but was limited in how many changes made to a single post.
@scottfsmith I manage large FB Group and I have seen the same problem. When users delete posts it can make the discussion discontinuous, confusing, and sometimes misleading. Ex: Someone post “I agree” but then the post they agreed with gets deleted and it makes it look like they agreed with the previous post - which might be the exact opposite of what they were agreeing with.
My opinion is that once any post is submitted it should be considered forum property that belongs to all members. It would be much too messy to have members involved as a group in deciding what can be deleted. I don’t think anyone cares about members deleting comments that don’t affect other comments but it seems impossible to have a policy that efficiently determines the consequences of removal of any given comment, so a general restriction seems the only practical route.
Oh well. People get so serious now. We should always be careful about what we WROTE. When that is in the public domain, we never know if that is copied by some bots or archived at some dark corner…
I just would not think GF is a site we should be concerned with. But some of the FB postings are totally different things.
Perhaps setting a time limit within which a post could be deleted entirely, ie a week. During that time the conversation is still active and a deletion should have a less confusing result and avoid the embarrasment of an ill advised rant
Thereafter, maybe only being able to add to the original post positing as to why the original poster now feels differently about what was said initially.
Being trapped by past errors or misunderstandings is a purgatory I would like to be able to avoid.
This might not solve the problem of world peace, but…