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It's getting annoying enough that I say there should be a rule that deleting a top-level post is grounds for a permanent ban, but that's probably not a strong enough deterrent.
Rather, the ability to delete a post should not be given to new accounts. I'm not sure if that's possible to do, admin-wise, but it should be considered.
It's also possible that this behavior, while annoying, can't be stopped at any positive ROI. We're talking about a policy of the mods restoring posts people have consciously deleted. I think the safety valve of post deletion makes people feel safer being bolder and so enlivens discussion. If breaking deletion is what it takes to stop this guy, then maybe stopping this guy isn't worth it.
Even if new users couldn’t delete posts until they’d been users for 100 days or whatever, this guy would just edit them to say ‘deleted’ and then delete his account, so that isn’t a big deterrent.
The only thing I can think of is mods (who are presumably able to see deleted posts) manually restoring deleted comments created within 50 posts of a user joining the community to protect against bad actors. Idk if that’s viable.
This is supposed to be discussion forum of lasting value, not fleeting disposable shitpost zone.
Just reserve the power of deleting posts to moderators only. If you posted by mistake something that revealed classified info, broke some anti-terrorist law or compromised your OPSEC, the delete button will blank it temporarily and notify the moderators, and they will decide whether to keep it or not.
I think that's asking too much of the codebase and zorba's ability to tweak it
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What about:
The account gets locked and the deleted messages are restored at the discretion of the mods.
This would get rid of the annoyance for the readers. I don't know if it is technically feasible though.
In general, if people want to distance themselves from their previous messages in earnest, that is what strikethrough is for. If I also think that a post of mine is rage bait, I might additionally add spoiler tags in to get less future engagement with it.
Delete should be reserved for posts without substance, or posts which have not gathered any replies for a while.
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Even if it were banned, I'd still prefer the deletion to editing it to the point of indecipherability.
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I don't think it even needs a new rule, clearly violates:
as well as meta rule
Maybe top level comments requiring some account age/karma for posting would help though.
I assume the mods would have already banned the person if there was an easy way. Did @2rafa recognize the style, or is top-level post deleter using a consistent block of IPs or set of IPs known to be used by a single VPN provider? I suppose someone could make some sort of bot that auto-replies with the original post in the case OP deletes the post in bad faith. Maybe selectively browser fingerprinting new accounts from suspect IPs?
I’m not a mod so don’t have access to that information, but I noticed the style and that he posted two top level responses in a row which is very rare for regulars outside of election-day or other major happening threads.
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