deleting accounts

[El]

jman, from what I can understand, they try to act badass, but show their weakness by caring enough for their account to delete/deactivate it, thus are not as badass as they claimed to be, while those who would not delete their account show their badassness by not caring wether or not their account stays forever. In other words, thanks for informing us that you are badass, I will make a mental note, and never ever fuck with you : 0

Lol.  I think you answered my question quite well.

[odeon]

 

[ProfessorFarnsworth]

Deleting accounts makes searching post history more difficult and limited as either you have to search by keywords or use google (which would be limited to publicly views areas of I2 only) respectively. So if you plan to leave and don't want anyone tracking your past posts so easily, you'd opt for your account to be deleted.

But I doubt that's the real reason most people do it though.

[RageBeoulve]

What's the point of people deleting their accounts here? If you don't want to be here just simply stop coming here. No need to throw an internet fit and delete your account. 

Who the fuck are you?

Dude...

[Jack]

Be as it may, I'm not keen on deleting accounts these days because it can make a mess of the database.

How does it mess up the database when nothing is removed?

[odeon]

Be as it may, I'm not keen on deleting accounts these days because it can make a mess of the database.

How does it mess up the database when nothing is removed?

There are member-specific relations and data to keep track of all sorts of things relating to members, from posts to member groups to PMs. These are deleted because the account is deleted. In the visible cases, the member's posts default to a named guest, but other data is deleted. In some cases, the software will most likely attempt to replace deleted relations with a default but that can be tricky, depending on the size of the database, the number of members, installed mods, etc.

I don't know in detail what happens but I know that frequently data is "orphaned".

[Jack]

So then it is in fact a deletion. That's a highly inefficient way for a database to function. One should be able to render the primary layer as inert, similar to a ban; removing it is nonsensical. Surprised you're even willing to do it. Apologies for all my rogue data.

[Jack]

[odeon]

So then it is in fact a deletion. That's a highly inefficient way for a database to function. One should be able to render the primary layer as inert, similar to a ban; removing it is nonsensical. Surprised you're even willing to do it. Apologies for all my rogue data.

It would be much easier to disable the user, yes, and obviously safer for the database, but we've done it since this place started and the forum software does offer a choice in the matter.

SMF, btw, is similar to other software in that respect, AFAIK.

[Jack]

It's madness.

[Jack]

Still not convinced this is what's occurring. If so, it would stand to reason this place would be fundamentally broken. It doesn't make sense; the search function shouldn't even work properly when searching by username for deleted accounts, though that's hard to say for certain without knowing exactly where the search looks. Can you query your user tables for deleted accounts, or can you only retrieve information from other tables for those users?

[Jack]

What a bunch of crap. Should change my custom title to, Silent Destroyer of the Aspie Elite.

[midlifeaspie]

Still not convinced this is what's occurring. If so, it would stand to reason this place would be fundamentally broken. It doesn't make sense; the search function shouldn't even work properly when searching by username for deleted accounts, though that's hard to say for certain without knowing exactly where the search looks. Can you query your user tables for deleted accounts, or can you only retrieve information from other tables for those users?

Do you think the aspie overlord is hiding something nefarious?

[P7PSP]

What a bunch of crap. Should change my custom title to, Silent Destroyer of the Aspie Elite.

Don't get too far ahead of yourself. Wait until you have actually destroyed us. 

[midlifeaspie]

This place isn't fundamentally broken?