Staff will not delete or anonymize my account, what can I do?

Ah yes, I forgot due to spam risks we disallow editing after {x} days. But deletion should still be allowed. Can you verify this is the case @techAPJ? Deletion is safe (at the rate limit) in a way that old edits are not.

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It shouldn’t be easy but at least it should be autonomous process to at least anonymize the user maybe with a catch that they will be given details on screen to read with all the warnings related to anonymisation and they can’t create another account in future.

Just double checking: are you sure the admin understands what you are asking? I can see why an admin wouldn’t want to delete, so asking for deletion may have set them off in the wrong direction. So make sure they understand that you are asking for anonymization and that they understand that this means that all the content will remain (you never know).

If it’s a discourse forum, you can also point out how easy it is to actually do what you are asking (perhaps even send step-by-step instructions).

The fact is that it’s just one admin and isn’t responding to the messages that are sent from my account.

So start a public topic tagging them and mention that you’re unsure they received your PM attempts!

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Will try that (hoping it works)

Post deletion is not allowed if post_edit_time_limit is passed. That setting defaults to 60 days (86400 minutes). Here is the description of the setting:

The author can edit or delete their post for (n) minutes after posting. Set to 0 for forever.

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As a baby step in this direction we might allow deletion since that is less risky than editing (and it’s rate limited, or should be anyway). The intent of the setting is editing as you may have noticed: post_edit_time_limit

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Added on my list to allow post deletion regardless of the setting post_edit_time_limit and verify that post deletions are rate limited.

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If you are planning to have member editing and member deleting separate, rather than a “regardless” please have it have a separate time limit setting. Deletion of posts mid-topic could render it more difficult to read if not completely trash the topic.

Irrelevant, this can already happen and effectively does not. Remember it’s “intent to delete” not an immediate delete. Try it!

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Done via:

Also verified that post deletions are rate limited. Three post deletions are allowed every one minute, should we make it more aggressive? Or at least add another hourly rate limit?

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Probably a daily limit is more sensible.

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I would say this almost qualifies as a GDPR-notable change cc @riking @gerhard

It was basically accidental that we prevented old post deletions after {x} days when the setting was called post_edit_time_limit … never “delete”. That might be because upon delete, the post is edited – by the system, not the user – to say

(post retracted by author, will be deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)

prior to delete. You can see where that might have (wrongly) gotten caught in the edit logic.

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So does it still do that after the change so that people have a chance to flag? (I know that’s not what OP was concerned about, but in a more normal forum…)

As I said, this has been allowed forever with rate limits, and we historically don’t have an actual de-facto real world problem with it on live sites.

Beyond that, GDPR even more explicitly allows this, and within the constraints of rate limiting, I agree with it too.

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Added daily rate limit of 50 via:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/c352f8eb152940d8523dd9c97fd88b3f54557fd0

Should we make this a site setting configurable by admin?

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Yes definitely make it a site setting in the rate limits section.

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Done via:

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/a6d50d1ff703eb979276b2f7b5ec3c509e174397

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A post was split to a new topic: Post deletions rate limit per day not working