Is this really what happens? On our instance, if a member can actually delete their profile themselves, then everything is gone, including posts.
If they can’t delete their profile (because they are outside of the delete user max post age setting), they have to ask site admins to have all personal data erased.
So an admin would anonymize the account, the posts actually stay and the username is changed to “anon12345678”. As this step requires the attention of an admin, the admin can also just change the username afterwards to whatever naming convention you want to have in place.
You could further give more clarity to deleted profiles by:
- changing profile pictures to a generic one for anonymized profiles
- changing the title of anonymized profiles
- having a group for anonymized profiles and having a special group flair
Using a group with a flair and a title looks like this then:
You have to enable “primary group” in the group settings for the flair and the title to show up:
