Tell HN: To improve quality of conversation, HN should not limit deletion time

8 points·hoodoof··4 comments

Say I reconsider the tone of a comment I have made on HN. Chances are I cannot delete it because too much time has passed.

I think that there should not be a limit on deletion time, so that people may at any time delete their posts having reconsidered the tone of conversation.

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Keep in mind that there is a 2 hour window on deletion, which is more than enough time for you to catch your mistakes/address widely downvoted comments.

However, a recent change made it so that a reply to your post will disable deletion. The intent is that it discourages conversations from being broken up, but after a couple months with it, I don't think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

You can always follow-up with a new comment containing a retraction or apology or whatever.

A problem with extending that window is that there can be subsequent comments in reaction to yours (and, in turn, other comments reacting to those), and removing an original well after the fact can ruin context.

It would be pretty difficult to read a number of older posts if let's say 4 or 5 "flaming comments" were deleted. Then you would have 10 responses that would left on the record (without clarity as to what they were intending to address).

It would basically ruin the majority of older posts where good conversations (read with opposing positions) existed.

I like the content left in its genuine (or original) form.

personally, I find the deletion time limit a bit arbitrary. I suppose the finality is there to make one consider the tone before posting. there's nothing worse than posting a karma-burning comment and coming back to find there's nothing you can do about it.

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