When a user is anonymized, their mentions and quotes are modified to show the new username (anonymousXXXX).
I find it weird that when we delete a user account, the same process is not applied.
The user and all their posts are deleted, but their name remains in quotes, which could still identify them.
It would be more logical (and respectful of the user when the deletion is requested by them) for quoted usernames to be obfuscated as well.
Of course, admins can anonymize before deleting the account, but automating this step would make things simpler on their end.
I admit I find it strange that the subject hasn’t come up before, but the search and ask.discourse.org didn’t return any topic about this specifically.
But it also doesn’t leave the option to keep the name - and removing it will make the forum harder to read. So I don’t think that that is desired behavior.
If all of a user’s posts are deleted keeping their username when quoted in other posts wouldn’t necessarily make a forum any less difficult to read, would just mean new readers wouldn’t be able to tell who was being referenced other than random number set to anonymized user account.
This does seem like quoted username should be deleted as part of account deletion, maybe the default could just change that to “deleted user” or something unless account is anonymized to keep user posts? That would be more difficult to understand what people are talking about if all deleted account usernames are just changed to “deleted” instead of a number that is the same for all their posts / quoted username.
Right I think I understood what you meant, sorry my wording in responsem ay have been confusing and changed that statement to less difficult instead of more is I think what I meant to write there.
Removing quoted usernames can deffinitley make a topic more difficult to understand, but if the posts authored by the user who’s name is being deleted are also deleted that may be moot.
As in, a statement like “I disagree with that, joe,” won’t mean anything if Joe’s statements are deleted. “I disgree with that (deleted username) will alert readers that people are speaking to someone who’s posts are gone.
The proposal here is to obfuscate the username in discussions not delete the users posts entirely. I think this is a good idea and brings it in line with the anonymizing feature, which does obfuscate the username as explained in the op.
Yeah it makes things like this a bit harder to read, but how often do you have posts from multiple anonymized users and someone answers to them using a mention? Seems to be a rare occurrence.
