Is there a way to Close or delete an account?

zardon · 2020-07-20T15:30:40.073Z

On the account preferences there appears to be no way to close or delete an account.

Is there a way to close an account, delete the records/etc. I don't really use this site that much and have no need for an account at this time.

Jumhyn · 2020-07-20T16:06:16.267Z

From what I can tell Discourse prevents users from wholesale deleting their accounts once they cross a threshold of time/number of posts. Jeff Atwood recommends deleting all your posts (which should be easy enough for you, as the number is pretty low), but it's unclear to me whether Jeff is implying that the option to self-delete should reappear at that point.

Otherwise, this is something that @forum_admins should be able to help you with.

benrimmington · 2020-07-21T09:10:55.836Z

If the deletion of your topics/posts isn't necessary, the forum admins can Anonymize your profile. For example:

Discourse Meta – 14 Jun 19

Delete my account

I don’t have any need for this account anymore, so I’d like to delete it…however, turns out I can’t do that myself. Can you please delete my account and remove or at least anonymize all personal information related to it? Please confirm the...

Reading time: 1 mins 🕑 Likes: 9 ❤

If you only want to stop receiving emails:

https://forums.swift.org/my/preferences/emails

Change both of the "Send me an email…" options to "never".
Uncheck the "Activity Summary" and "Mailing list mode" options.
Click the "Save Changes" button.

anon9791410 · 2023-07-26T01:03:23.868Z

Why does the button exist? It is not functional.

Screenshot 2023-07-25 at 9.01.51 PM1336×286 15.7 KB

anon9791410 · 2023-08-07T07:54:56.892Z

Jumhyn:

this is something that @forum_admins should be able to help you with.

I contacted @mishal_shah 10 days ago and @Nicole_Jacque 5, but haven't gotten a response. This is the problem mentioned at your link, and the rate limit that Jeff mentions is set much too low here for self-deleting, the solution I used on the sister site, to be acceptable.

I don't know what to do next, and I also don't understand if I should be editing every post to include "Not a Contribution". The User Content License paragraph starts off by saying

Unless you identify your Content as "Not a Contribution", any Content submitted by you shall be under the terms of the Swift license

but ends with

If you do not want to grant the foregoing rights, do not submit or post Content to the Swift Forum.

That reads as contradictory to me.

Jumhyn · 2023-08-07T12:14:32.269Z

anon9791410:

That reads as contradictory to me.

Even if you mark something as “Not a Contribution” the terms of service require you to grant a license for the purpose of displaying the comment (including the “Not a Contribution” marking) on the forum at all.

In any case, I don’t believe there’s a mechanism for revoking your license grant of prior contributions to the project. If that were possible it would make accepting any contributions quite the risk for the project owner.

John_McCall · 2023-08-07T15:18:43.936Z

We’ve been sitting on Jessy’s request specifically because it’s been phrased as a legal question that we now have to get an answer to. One week is not a long delay in the world of legal advice, and we don’t have an answer from counsel yet. My own (unofficial and tentative) understanding is that we’re not under any legal obligation to delete posts, and we’d prefer not to if we don’t have to.

Jessy granted these forums a perpetual and irrevocable license to publish their posts here. This isn’t some wild and novel legal claim we’re making; it’s inherent to the nature of internet forums, because the forums server sending someone’s posts to other users is a form of publishing that requires a license. The expectation that a reasonable user would have when making a post is that it’ll be posted subject to the terms of use of the forums, both explicit and as expressed in the forums software.

Those terms intentionally do not include a unilateral right to withdraw posts after an arbitrary amount of time. Posts here are part of a public conversation, and they provide important context to the decisions we make and to other people’s posts. If Jessy wants us to anonymize their posts, we’re willing to honor that, but we want to preserve the original text as a record of the conversation that happened, and we’ll probably revert the edits Jessy’s been making as a sort of defacement of that record. But we’ll see what we hear from legal counsel.

taylorswift · 2023-08-07T17:48:31.927Z

did anything change in the forums settings in the past two months that prevents user posts from disappearing after they close an account? if i remember right, deleting an account should delete all posts associated with that account.

John_McCall · 2023-08-07T19:01:14.499Z

I don’t believe anything about that has ever changed. Deleting an account does not automatically delete any posts. Discourse does not allow accounts to be deleted if they still have posts that haven't been deleted, and posts cannot be deleted if they're older than three months. All we can do is anonymize them.

I'm not sure what happened with that post, honestly. It kinda feels like Discourse's database is in an inconsistent state around that deleted user.