Forums / Maintenance / Report Problems

I was in the neighborhood again, and decided to ask a question I've had for a long time.

Why is it that when a user is deactivated, their posts are also hidden? That seems kind of stupid to me. I'll explain why.

Let's say that in the forums, they made posts and points relevant to the discussion at hand. Or, let's say they made a post that got like, 30 upvotes or 30 downvotes. I'd be more than a little bit interested in knowing what they wrote.

Same thing applies to the comments section.

So, I don't quite see why for banned users, the message This user has been deactivated and their posts are no longer visible comes up. If their account needs to be banned, ban their account. But why hide their posts as well?

For example, I'd like to know about the OP of "Internet can now find stars" and "This cheeto…" and things like that, but the OP is banned and their posts aren't there. What could have prompted the hilarity that ensued? I assume OP would have to have been pretty weird or funny to cause something like that, but I'll never know.

So, I'd just like to hear why the posts don't appear, and whether or not it's practical to do what vBulletin forums do, which is to have "Banned" (or, in this case, "Inactive") appear as their user title, but still have their posts there for everybody to see.

Also, for that matter, it would be nice if they still had walls that people could write on. I think the only thing an "Inactive" member shouldn't have is the ability to post or log in.

For example, I’d like to know about the OP of “Internet can now find stars” and “This cheeto…” and things like that, but the OP is banned and their posts aren’t there.

Deactivated users asked to be deactivated and their posts are hidden. If you choose to leave KYM your posts are hidden for the normal users.

If you are banned – the posts are visible and people can still see them. Banned – didn't choose to leave so u don't get your posts removed.

The OP Sweatie-Killer was deactivated, not banned.

Banned vs. Deactivated accounts:

Larger version

Here is the discussion thread:
https://knowyourmeme.com/forums/site-related/topics/16684-account-deactivation
Check RandomMan's post.

Ah. That would be nice, thank you.

Sweatie Killer wrote:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-10959590

“By putting their home computers to work when they would otherwise be idle, three “citizen scientists” have discovered a rare astronomical object."

OP post of Internet can find stars thread

Wait, did you think deactivation wasn't (also) voluntary?

The next post was the "Internet, Serious Business" image. And it all snowballed from there. (Too bad many of the images on the earlier pages got nommed by teh internets.)

I have brought this up a few times before. Allowing a user to deactivate his/her own account is essentially one giant loophole in the "Delete Your Post Within 30 Minutes" anti troll tactic.

However, the main problem comes from the fact that Spambots are hidden with a combination of a Ban and a Deactivate (the mods "Delete Spambot" button or whatever does both), something I don't think the single coder wants to go change any time soon.

Sweatie Killer wrote:

It is not a meme….

For what it's worth, OP, I spent about 20 minutes searching, and at last, I found the OP of This Cheeto. Here it is.

I must admit, I'm fine with deactivation, but it pisses me off sometimes that it hides all their posts. So let this be my suggestion:

I think that if a user is deactivated, it should say "Inactive," but their posts shouldn't be hidden. They should still have walls, but wall posts should be locked, and their karma should be locked as well so that they can't be upvoted or downvoted anymore.

What does everybody think?

Check the link to the previous discussion in my post above. Look at RandomMan's suggestion. Which is perfect because it gives a mod a choice on removing posts or not.

The major problem in implementing anything like this, is the fact we only have one person working on the code. And atm, he has more than enough stuff to handle.