Deletion of Accounts
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This post is written to address the issue of account deletions.
We generally do not do this. This is because nodeBB is bad at handling account deletions. Other forum platforms may neatly allow admins to delete accounts and all of the content attached to the same, but node BB simply does not. I have checked the community forums and, aside from warning admins that deletion will cause link and post issues, the advice is:
- Mark and move all posts to an admin-only forum that members cannot read; or
- Delete the posts as an admin.
Doing either of these is labor-intenstive. Recently, I deleted 900+ posts, and it took me roughly 3 hours. To do this I had to go to the account profile, pull up the posts related to the account, and manually delete each of them.
So if a member wants us to delete their account because they don't want to come back, we will simply ban the account. There are exceptional circumstances which may warrant taking the time to manually delete or move posts, but for now the general rule is that admins will respond to requests for deletion by banning an account , no questions asked.
You can direct any questions about this policy to me or any other admin.
