Give Me the Ability to Delete my Own Posts (And another thing) or Give me Death!

[Witch Cat]

Hey, so, I'm sure we all encountered this problem. You goof up a post, accidentally post it in the wrong tab or sub-forum, or whatever else shenanigans you get yourself into, and you want to delete said post. Now, wouldn't it be a great idea to let people delete their own posts? I already know that you can request the Mods delete your post for you, but honestly, wouldn't it much easier if people could delete their own posts?

Just a simple red button that says "delete" right next to the edit feature would be more than enough. So, what do you guys think?

EDIT: Another feature I thought of that may help the site is allowing GMs in RPs to delete or "hide" the posts of users who left the RP, or have been kicked out.

[DarkStar]

I concur. It might at least aid in self-moderation.
Though I do see how it would become more difficult
To detect abuse.

[BurningDaisies]

IF they're worried about abuse, the delete button could be more of a "hide" button.
That way the post (or even just the content of the post) isn't normally viewable except by forums staffers, so it remains for posterity and review, if there is a case of abuse.

I'm not sure how well it would work out for the mods, but it could also flag the post when you do that and alert a mod the post needs to be reviewed for permanent deletion. Maybe a multiple choice option for the "reason of deletion" could be added? [Duplicate Post, Wrong Thread, and things like that.] So they could be categorized.

That way you could have the self moderation and keep the post from interrupting the thread with unnecessary content, and the content could be deleted at the staff's discretion.

It sounds nice, but I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement something like that though

[Witch Cat]

@DarkStar Maybe I'm not just thinking creatively here, but how exactly would this system be abused?

[Witch Cat]

@BurningDaisies I personally don't see a problem with allowing the player to be able to permanently delete their own posts. But your system could work too!

[BurningDaisies]

As an example, say there's a case of flaming, trolling, or harassment where someone is being maliciously targeted. That violates forum policy. If the aggressor in this case deletes all his related posts, it can be cumbersome to retrieve that data and make a fair reasonable judgement based on it. If the post is entirely purged, it may be impossible. Then you slide down the slippery slope of "he said, she said" arguments. The idea is that mods should have good evidence to look at when resolving conflicts. If they don't have good data, good decision-making gets a lot harder.

TL;DR - At the very least the posts should be cached in some way, so they can be looked at later for conflict resolution purposes.

[Witch Cat]

@BurningDaisies I see what you mean, but it seems like it'd be almost impossible for something like that to happen here. In all my days here, I never once saw a troll. Granted, they might just be too scared to actually do something malicious when they can't delete their posts, but let's say, if we do allow the users the privledge to delete their own posts, and a troll ends up spamming a forum before promptly deleting the spam and pretending to be innocent. A few quick screen shots would be more than enough to prove who did what.

Or maybe storing an archive of all the posts would eradicate that specific problem entirely.

[BurningDaisies]

There may be other examples of how to abuse it as well (none that I can think of atm, but I'm sure there is). While screen caps are useful its not always possible to get them because some people don't think to save screenshots for later use when crap like that happens. Its nice to see that kind of community policing and investigation, but it seems much easier for the staff to just have a copy of the content and a timestamp.

However, there are other ways they could handle that kind of scenario, and my idea is just merely one of them.