On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

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white belt
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by white belt »

Right but being doxxed isn’t an unknown unknown. It’s a known threat, but maybe to some on here it’s an unknown known. There are people who must mitigate doxxing because there life depends on it (celebrity, abusive ex-lover, dissident, etc). See here for that rabbit hole: https://www.inteltechniques.com/index.html

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »

sure, but what if you become a celebrity or dissident or stalker victim etc?

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Bankai
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Bankai »

Nuke the journal and account only while leaving all other posts intact. Most vulnerable info is shared via journals and deleting account makes it impossible to seach for user's posts. I don't see anyone having enough stamina to go through >200k posts on this forum looking for sensitive info on deleted user.

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »

this is why i don't write a journal :lol:

but stamina depends on the money

eg "have $4million in bank" potential mark would make me search every post if i were a professional extortionist.

i'm not saying this will happen. i'm just highly skeptical about our certainties about the future.

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Bankai
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Bankai »

Why would an extortionist browse ERE forum when there are hordes of people flashing wealth openly on social media?

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »

im not on social media, so idk what goes on there. im just saying, the effort is proportional to the reward.

ok here is another: friend turns into enemy (ugly divorce). everything you said can and is used against you by predatory lawyers.

but anyway my point is not specific scenarios (we can't know every scenario!), my point is that *we can't know the future* so having the option to respond to unexpected change is a good thing.

jacob
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by jacob »

I find myself agreeing mostly with Seppia, Campitor, AxelHeyst, so rather than summarize their detailed writings I'll just suggest re-reading all their previous posts above.

I'll note that everybody already has infinite-duration editing rights on their own posts (if you can't edit your own post, please lmk, because something went wrong in the settings). However, you only have 15 minutes to delete an actual post after you make it. If you still want to get rid of the content, you'll have to edit the post and leave it blank or with a dot or a comment that it was deleted or something.

Editing robots.txt only works for whitehat crawlers and scrapers that respect this file. Insofar some grammar-nazi is searching and achieving the internet for people who mix up "then" and "than" in their writing for future prosecution, robots.txt asking them not to will not prevent them from doing so.

You should absolute expect that whatever you write on the internet to stay around forever in some form for someone to find it if they really want to. If you don't want to say something for the record or not stand by what you're saying, you should not say it on a public forum on the internet! Insofar this makes anyone feel like they can't speak their mind, maybe that's their feelings/intuition telling them that there are or could be social consequences to "what's on their mind". I see such concerns informing one's speaking as an improvement in that it recognizes that one's statements do not exist in a vacuum or in a bubble even if one's opinion might. Maybe such emergent concerns for the real world might eventually inform what's on one's mind too even if it initially only informs one's behavior. Rights without consequences is not freedom, it's adolescence. If this means saying less in public and for the record until learning to navigate these concerns, I think that is a good thing---especially when I'm wearing my moderator hat.

(In particular, while the forums do have a "politics and eternal disagreements" section, it's mostly intended for discussions about the overlap between ERE and politics. It was not meant to provide a battlefield for denizens of "politics-free forums" to stake out political territory)

I'll therefore and hereby declare "the era of account nuking" officially over.

I'll still deal with limited requests as described in the OP. Insofar anyone realize they wrote something that could have adverse reality-based consequences, they're free to go through their posts and edit out whatever they now think they shouldn't have written in the first place. However, I'm not going to get involved in this.

I'll also point out the obvious in that insofar anyone decides it's time to leave the forum for whatever reason, they don't have to "delete their account" to do so but simply "stop logging in".

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »

jacob wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 11:58 am
I'll note that everybody already has infinite-duration editing rights on their own posts (if you can't edit your own post, please lmk, because something went wrong in the settings).
oh! it was implied that one didn't. if so, then yeah, $4mil in the bank is worth the effort of a manual edit of one's post history :D

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jennypenny
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by jennypenny »

I'm a little shocked that now iDave is deleting all of his content instead of just editing it.


This isn't just directed at iDave ... but it seems a little obnoxious when people who've maintained journals and gotten a LOT of support and constructive criticism from forumites in working towards their goals then blitz their content instead of carefully editing it. People get a lot of help from forumites, so then why damage the forum on the way out instead of leaving something behind as a kind of thank you? Why the 'thanks for helping me achieve the biggest goal of my life, now piss off' thing?

Stahlmann
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Stahlmann »

Isn't like
Why the 'thanks for helping me achieve the biggest goal of my life, now piss off' thing?
overreacting? I think if there was real connection, you can always meet up in real life?

IlliniDave
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by IlliniDave »

jennypenny wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:05 pm
I'm a little shocked that now iDave is deleting all of his content instead of just editing it.


This isn't just directed at iDave ... but it seems a little obnoxious when people who've maintained journals and gotten a LOT of support and constructive criticism from forumites in working towards their goals then blitz their content instead of carefully editing it. People get a lot of help from forumites, so then why damage the forum on the way out instead of leaving something behind as a kind of thank you? Why the 'thanks for helping me achieve the biggest goal of my life, now piss off' thing?
Nothing I wrote in that journal was helpful/useful/insightful/full of knowledge, it was just personal naval gazing and small talk "amongst friends". But this isn't the place for that. If I can be of help, just ask. I'm not going anywhere. I was just acting before the era of being allowed to remove things ends as well.

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:41 pm
it was just personal naval gazing
so, caught red-handed staring at ships, huh? :P

:D

(please don't kill me, just trying to lighten up the mood of the thread, and i couldn't resist)

suomalainen
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by suomalainen »

IlliniDave wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:41 pm
Nothing I wrote in that journal was helpful/useful/insightful/full of knowledge, it was just personal naval gazing and small talk "amongst friends". But this isn't the place for that.
Disagree. I found your navel gazing quite helpful, useful and insightful. I have mixed feelings* about seeing all your edits. On the one hand, I agree that you should be able to delete stuff if you want (archiving practicalities aside); on the other hand, along the lines of @jp's comments, seeing the mass deletions, I will admit that I felt a loss and thought "that's a shame".

* Not that my opinion matters, but ... small talk amongst friends and all...

IlliniDave
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by IlliniDave »

Alphaville wrote:
Thu Feb 04, 2021 4:47 pm
so, caught red-handed staring at ships, huh? :P

:D

(please don't kill me, just trying to lighten up the mood of the thread, and i couldn't resist)
I've never hid my fondness for Vanguard.

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Alphaville
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Alphaville »


IlliniDave
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by IlliniDave »

Nor have I been shy about my fondness for better, vanished times.

7Wannabe5
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I periodically review my posts and edit here and there for rudeness. The funny thing is I usually sound ruder in my own head than in type. It's kind of like right when you see a picture maybe you think you look fat, but then when you look at it again, maybe even just a few years later, you just think that you look like you but younger. The main thing that I have noticed when reviewing posts here and also my deep archive of journals, notes to self, and project plans is how very often I am writing the same old thing. So, it seems to me that it's pretty unlikely that anybody would be very surprised by anything anybody they know writes on the internet. For better or worse, everybody you know already probably has you pretty well pegged.

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Bankai
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by Bankai »

At least as far as INTJs are concerned, keeping the guard up and not sharing with people other than SO/closest friends/likeminded family members is the default modus operandi. And even of the people INTJs share with - their inner ring - everyone has some pieces of the puzzle but none has the full picture (other than perhaps SO). They would all be surprised in one way or another, but each for different reason.

theanimal
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by theanimal »

There were plenty of long time regulars who stopped posting due to the Trump presidency, at least they had the decency to just stop posting without deleting content. IMO, the deletion of posts has been extremely short sighted and selfish. It's the worst thing to happen to this forum by far. Sure, someone has a right to their content, but as said previously you've entered a public forum and instead of CYA one ends up hurting others more in the process. If you really want to minimize your content it's not that hard to go back through your posts and edit out places/more pertinent details. With web archive it's pointless anyways as it's possible to see the journals of bigato, Augustus, ffj, iDave and anyone else who has deleted their content. It's just a hassle now and destroys the collective value of the forum.

And once again, to echo AxelHeyst. What's the point of being/pursuing ERE and FI if you're just going to remain mentally trapped when you attain it? FFS, get some tougher skin. We aren't in the USSR.

theanimal
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Re: On deleting journals, posts, and accounts

Post by theanimal »

Everyone here has something to offer. It may not seem valid to the individual who's posting but there are plenty of people who don't comment or post in every single journal who find it useful. FFJ had plenty of rope skills, building knowledge, home brewing and experiments with mycology among other things. Bigato had his projects in Brazil and plenty of interpersonal advice. iDave offered plenty of financial things to consider as well as subjective decisions as to whether to keep going or when to pull the plug.

All gone. What a shame indeed.

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