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openstreetmap
Suggestion: One should be able to delete their own diary entries
Problem
Currently there's no way to delete a post/entry.
Description
While I understand that what's have been published on the internet can never be truly deleted but that's not I'm suggesting here. Just delete the entry from the official OSM database and not care who archives/mirrors it anywhere.
Screenshots
No response
Even administrators can't actually delete them, though they can hide them.
Well it was inherited from the general OSM design of never physically removing anything from the database but instead just marking it as deleted.
Now there may well be an argument that what applies to map data does need to apply to diary entries (we do after all allow GPS traces to be fully deleted) but that is not the current situation.
Currently there's no way to delete a post/entry.
Note that you can edit them to remove content. Though it will not delete associated comments.
Note that you can edit them to remove content. Though it will not delete associated comments.
That's my current workaround.
Would it be possible to make a "hide"/"unhide" option available to the users themselves as well? That might make it possible to de-clutter diaries?
That will still allow people to post some silly claims, hide whenever people post comments, do it until people get tired by it and later claim that noone opposed their idea.
We already have examples of people blanking their entries, but that preserves comments (not linking cases known to me to avoid focusing attention on them, but if anyone doubts their existence I can link some)
I might be slightly annoyed that a suggestion for improvement of the status quo falls flat because users cannot be trusted in using any feature responsibly. But given the state of the Internet as a whole and sadly quite a few people in our community it seems to the only valid course of action for now. Not happy but accepting.
Has anything fallen flat? As far as I know there is no objection to the idea, just nobody has stepped up to implement it yet.
I pointed out that we don't do actual deletions, but that's not to say that the delete link that administrators see (which sets marks the post as invisible) couldn't be made available to the author.
I guess there is a question around hiding a diary post that has comments, because you're effectively removing other people work as well (the comments) and likewise for comments in that hiding a comment can break the meaning of other following comments that refer to it.
Sorry Tom, no, nobody objected directly and I might have overreacted.
Yet Mateusz's comment brought back the realization that every "good idea" (however this good maybe perceived) has downsides that cannot be remedied by technology but are just anchored in human nature. And that frustrates me a little.