Hi all,
After a long time of being on a final warning, we have issued a final ban on one of our longterm users for consistently breaking our code of conduct.
He has requested that we not “anonymise” his account but that we delete it entirely. Discourse tells us this is not possible due to him having over 3000 posts, and additionally we’d like to preserve topics that he created in bulk, rather than having to manually change ownership on each one.
Any thoughts on how to proceed here?
Personally, without knowing the full context, I think you have no obligation to agree to that request. If this user has posted a lot of stuff on the forum that’s worth keeping, and deleting it would remove valuable content / create gaps in existing discussions, anonymizing seems like the way to go.
He may not love that solution, but…sorry, too bad for him, it’s your forum! I do think you should respect a user’s basic privacy rights, but that’s exactly why the ‘anonymize’ option exists.
I agree. His request for deletion is just an angry reaction. I’d go with anonymising to protect the integrity of the discussions. He has the right to ask for the removal of PII but that’s it.
Don’t be bullied.
(FYI it actually is possible to delete his posts and then his account, but I don’t think you should.)
Didn’t happen when you request he follows the rules though 
Taking it at face value, he doesn’t get to be an a-hole and then rip your carpet up on the way out. Tell him no.
I would check his posts for PI if user is based in EU.
Remove PI if some posts have it to be GDPR compliant and that’s it.