I just voted for this feature, but specifically I want to allow users to anonymize themselves.
I think it’s absolutely right that users shouldn’t be able to delete themselves once they’ve posted a lot or been around for a long time, but I think it would be really helpful for all users to be able to anonymize their own account.
In my experience, every time this has happened, it’s been super unpleasant. The kind of person who wants to be deleted is usually having very strong feelings about it, and it seems like the lack of a “Delete My Account” button aggravates those feelings.
When a user is so upset that they want to delete their account, and then find that they can’t, they tend to feel trapped in a cage. When they do get around to “simply contact a moderator,” they’re upset and angry.
These users typically demand that their account be deleted. They make threats, legal and otherwise. They are not at all open to a nuanced conversation about deletion vs. anonymization.
I just got another one of these this week, and I really don’t want to deal with another one.
As I’m imagining this feature, all users would have a “Delete My Account” button. Users who are under the deletion limits (delete user max post age, delete user self max post count) would get today’s “Delete My Account” experience.
Anyone over that limit would see a different dialog, saying something like this:
Are you sure you want to permanently delete your account?
Deleting your account will delete your user profile, but your public posts will remain on the forum. (Your posts will be anonymized, so nobody can see who posted them.)
This action cannot be undone!
Delete My Account
Cancel
And then, if they click “Delete My Account,” they’d be logged out and anonymized.
(Despite the claim that anonymization can’t be undone, it can be undone if the user creates a new account and an admin merges the anonymized account with the new one. So I’m not too worried about letting users anonymize themselves; we can always fix it later.)