Yes, on the one hand these are valid reasons but on the other hand people could/should take a little time and effort before posting something. And there is always the “edit post” option.
I think there are a lot of pros and cons regarding this issue and I also think it depends on the forum and the topics.
If people deleted their posts more often it might discourage others from helping. I don’t know.
I think this is a good option.
valid reasons for this: embarrassment, mistakes, accidental privacy
exposure, etc.
Those are not all the same.
Embarrassment and mistakes are good things. They help us become better
people. What is more likely to help one grow and educate others?
a) One can delete the original statement and pretend it never happened,
potentially erasing with it the reactions of others in the process.
b) One can reply/amend the original statement pointing out the mistake
or change of thinking, thereby positively reacting to potentially
received feedback from others.
accidental privacy exposure
That’s different scenario. On a mailing list there is nothing one can do
to take this back. In fact even with the forum, everyone using it in
mailing list mode or having notifications on a particular thread will
have a copy.
However it makes sense in this case for a moderator to be able to remove
the offending parts of the post.
While it true that threads may loose some continuity, but I think for
troubleshooting people ultimately will only care about the solution
(which is highlighted) and not the whole discussion
See above. Also it diminishes the time and energy others may have
already spent reacting to the now vanished post.
In many cases there are also nuggets of (maybe even unrelated) knowledge
in the replies that aren’t ultimately recognized as the solution. I feel
very strongly about this, as almost everything I know comes from
Fidonet/Usenet and mailing list discussions where helpful strangers
pointed me and others to valuable insights.
We don’t require anyone to register with their real name or identify
themselves in any way here. Everyone should feel free to make mistakes
and even experiment with different ways of thinking. I admit my
sensitivities are triggered here. Ultimately, I see to extremes:
a) A highly censored and moderated “safe” internet with real names and
subject to the whims and fashions of current popular thinking at best
and the will of corporate overlords at worst. It comes with lots of
“code of conduct”, “shadow banning” and self censorship.
b) The internet I grew up in: free, decentralized, messy and edgy but
full of awesome people battling the trolls and idiots of this world with
logic, reason and better ideas. And people like the Qubes OS team
sharing tremendous value with everyone who cares to pay attention.
I’m getting off topic, so I’ll stop myself here.
Also, if users want to nuke their profile, we can also “anonymize”
their accounts. Not sure what it does, though. Probably only replaces
the username on all their posts with “anon”.
I’d rather we state upfront that except for rare cases (privacy
exposure, doxing, illegal content) we don’t delete stuff. It’s out there
anyway (mailing list mode etc).
People don’t have to use their real names and if they feel they
embarrassed themselves so badly they can’t handle it, they may create a
new account and abandon the old one.
I see to extremes
two … 
For what it’s worth, I think that users should not be able to delete
posts, particularly for “embarrassment, mistakes” etc. If the message
was worth posting it should remain - if not, it will die on the vine.
Whole threads should not be removed at the whim of a user - there may
(as has been said) be excellent material for other users.
The only grounds that messages should be removed by admins should be
privacy exposure, or where the message runs completely outwith our code of
conduct.
Even the most stupid post can give rise to a sensible discussion, which
other users may learn from.
This is best practice, and we should adopt it.
I find myself being persuaded by the anti-deletion arguments. At the very least, one person should not be able to delete another person’s post, which means that someone who starts a thread should not have the power to delete everyone else’s replies to it by deleting the entire thread.
Yes I agree with not being able to delete other’s responses. And as I understand it, it is currently not possible for a user to delete a thread unless a moderator intervenes.
As far as moderation intervention policy goes for topic deletion, I think it should be on a case-by-case basis balancing the following:
And keeping in mind, the users may be fine with “anonymisation” of a post (i.e. remove user-related information from the post and change the poster to “DeletedUser”, for example).
Hi. I asked for one of my posts to be deleted because my problem turned out to be a typo in one of the commands rather than a technical problem. I think it should still be deleted. It’s not about user embarrassment / privacy exposure, but about “quality control” of this forum, preventing “spam” and misleading posts, and not wasting the time of Qubes users who are searching for solutions to theirs problems (for example, in a search engine) and landing on my post that provides no solutions to their problems.
This also happens on the mailing lists. Here’s a recent example.
It would be nice to have a unified deletion policy across all Qubes venues. That way we can document it and simply link to that documentation whenever anyone asks.
You’re right. Updated my post. But it could also be that someone else makes a typo mistake. I’ve made typos as well in the past and a post of someone somewhere mentioning it could be a typo helped me solve the issue. But this may be only useful in very particular situations where typos are common, since they could happen anywhere.
But in the end I think it should be up to the person who made the typo to decide.
This sounds good to me. Although it may be challenging if the moderation capabilities are not feature-similar.
We’re sorry, but your email message to [“qubes_os+9cdc00b92f50977f175a5dc12a0b3ba2@discoursemail.com”] (titled Re: [Qubes Forum] Cannot access to second hard drive [User Support]) didn’t work.
The topic you are replying to no longer exists – perhaps it was deleted? If you believe this is an error, contact a staff member.
The important part of my message seems to have been truncated:
We’re sorry, but your email message to [“qubes_os+9cdc00b92f50977f175a5dc12a0b3ba2@discoursemail.com”] (titled Re: [Qubes Forum] Cannot access to second hard drive [User Support]) didn’t work.
The topic you are replying to no longer exists – perhaps it was deleted? If you believe this is an error, contact a staff member.
Why do people do this?
Doesn’t matter if it was a user mistake - someone else could easily
make the same mistake/ typo in the future, and just deleting it without
comment is no help to anyone.
I admire people who say “stupid of me, it was …” - it shows more
character and a greater wish to contribute than just deleting messages.
You never know when someone else may find your foolishness helpful.
AND, of course, if many users make the same mistake, that points to
something wrong.
Here’s a policy - don’t delete anything, except “code of conduct” issues.
Edit posts where privacy is at issue. (Remembering that those who
interact via email have a copy anyway.)
Is there a time limit for how long users can go back and edit their own posts? If not, then users can always effectively delete their own posts by replacing the content with [Deleted] or similar. In this case, our policy can be, as unman suggested, that mods will intervene only when there’s a Code of Conduct violation or actual spam. In all other cases, it’s up to users to edit their own posts. No other mod deletion-type action should be expected. This would also ease the maintenance burden on mods, since we won’t have to act on so many requests for deletion. There can be a canned reply pointing to the deletion policy.
Yes I agree with not being able to delete other’s responses. And as I
understand it, it is currently not possible for a user to delete a
thread unless a moderator intervenes.
“Split-GPG setup failing; Qubes_GPG_DOMAIN not setting” from 12/26 had
an answer by unman.
original:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/1
unman’s answer:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/2
reply by OP:
https://forum.qubes-os.org/t/split-gpg-setup-failing-qubes-gpg-domain-not-setting/2079/3
It doesn’t matter which link I use the thread is gone.
100% agree. This is how it should be.
This also happens on the mailing lists. Here’s a recent
example.
This is a good example. Even if you would somehow moderate the thread
away on groups.google.com it would still be visible for all times at
qubes-users
It would be nice to have a unified deletion policy across all Qubes
venues. That way we can document it and simply link to that
documentation whenever anyone asks.
That would mean agreeing on a policy that can actually be implemented on
all venues. This includes
The most restrictive of all those should be the mailing list, where it
is impossible to delete posts other than in the groups.google.com
archive (all other archives will be unaffected).
Equally with the forum (mailing list mode).
In cases of code of conduct violations we will of course use all methods
available on each platform to remove the posts as much as possible.
Added a brief section on moderation. Let me know if you have any suggestions for improvement.
I must say from the moderation perspective this is the ideal. From the user perspective, let’s see how it plays out. No suggestions from my side.
Checked the settings. New users (tl0 and tl1) can edit up to 24h, all others can edit up to 30 days.
Does this change anything? Should we increase it?
Currently the edit history of the post is public, which would defeat a bit users who would want to “hide” something. This is something we can also tweak (edit history visible to public)
I’m inclined to say we should make the edit history private. As for the time limit, 30 days is pretty long, but unlimited would work better in terms of user self-service.
Checked the settings. New users can edit up to 24h, all others can
edit up to 30 days.
I’d prefer the user not being able to edit at all.
If there is a code of conduct violation the user is unlikely to
correct that themselves anyway and it’s a case for the moderators.
Any other edit muddies the water, since it may change the original
meaning and already made replies may seem out of context.
Keep in mind that edits are invisible to everyone using the
mailing list mode. We see the original post, but no edits.
It’s easy to see that those wishing to avoid the above would then start
to quote the original post in its entirety to bypass eventual subsequent
edits. That would degrade the readability for forum users though, I suspect.
Currently the edit history of the post is public, which would defeat
a bit users who would want to “hide” something. This is something we
can also tweak (edit history visible to public)
If this would be adopted, we would have made the life of the mods easier
but not addressed the central points made by unman, Raphael and myself.
What are the arguments for allowing edits?
I’m not too fond of the idea of disabling edits. They can be pretty useful and are generally very minor. Github issues also allows users to reply by email as well as editing their posts.
This is not the use case for the edits. Giving the users the power to edit is for them to avoid having to ask moderators for something. This example of yours would instead fall under the moderators’ responsibility do deal with.
I think is a rather extreme case. Most likely people will just be fixing stuff on the messages. And you can always quote the person and that will not be affected by the edit.
Edits are really useful. Typos, adding disclaimers in the OP, small corrections, etc. This is how github issues works as well. In general, small stuff that wouldn’t be too critical if someone were to miss.
And this critique of yours also affects forum users, although a bit less. When they go back to a topic the don’t see it from the top. Instead, they see it from where they last were. If someone edits the first post, they will likely miss the change as well.
Maybe this edit or not to edit should have its own discussion?
edit: Also, emails of posts only ship 5 mins after they are posted so any changes done until then will be included in the email.This last paragraph is one such example