Growing Successful Communities

[#1]

What do you feel are the negatives to allowing users to delete their own posts?  I have put some thought into it, I can't come up with a solid reason as to why a user should not be able to have this feature.  I have noticed that many forums do not allow you to delete content, only edit.  Do you feel there is a genuine purpose behind it?  I have felt that the user should be able to freely edit and delete their own content, it is theirs afer all.

Interested to hear!

[#2]

I suppose the main reason boards don't allow users to delete their posts is because it could completely ruin the conversation in a post.

For example, a user could be replying to a message above them, if that message was to be deleted the thread wouldn't make much sense and could cause confusion among users.

[#3]

Indeed, Mr Price has a point.

We have seen situations in the past where a user will troll a forum, start an argument fuel it for a while. Then delete all their own posts and report the others to a moderator.

The sensible way to configure, this, as far as I can make out, is to allow people to delete their post, all the while no-one else has replied to it. After that, you allow them to only edit the post.

Lithium has edit tracking, which means, from a moderation point of view, we can check to see evidence of trolling if users edit, where as if they delete the post, then we have nothing to check!

Cheers,

     Phil...

[#4]

Phil,

I've also seen users in our community sometimes abuse the edit ability to, effectively zero out posts when they weren't able to delete them outright, leaving a trail of blank posts that have to be cleaned up.

Participation in the Lithosphere has really given me a user perspective I didn't have before, and having experienced the plain user perspective, I have a newfound respect for a lot of subtle things I would have previously just dismissed.

Permissions to edit here come only after several rank increases, and for a while as I recall I could only edit for some set interval of time. (For the first time I really had to scrutinize what I wrote, double check the spelling before I post)    Later, I've been granted the ability to edit my posts, although I'm not sure I can delete them yet (haven't needed to try).

Bottom line,  if I were setting up a forum today, I'd add a lot more ranks and give these permissions out more slowly, so that the ability to edit or even delete a post are only given after the person has enough time in the community that they are unlikely to abuse them.  I think this approach avoids a lot of the issues cause by immature users in the community.

Mark