There is an unofficial FAQ by Jacques Mattheij, with an answer to this very question:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-unofficial-hn-faq#deleteacco...
There is also indeed the official FAQ:
https://jacquesmattheij.com/the-unofficial-hn-faq#deleteacco...
There is also indeed the official FAQ:
There's a certain level of hubris to an attitude in which a given site that feels it's needs are more important than users.
Saying you can't delete all your posts/account is the same as saying "you do not have the right to control your own posts here".
I think it should be OK on HN to delete all your comments on your account if you want. I appreciate that this would degrade the quality of impacted historical comment threads but hey that's the price for giving people back control over their digital lives.
It happens on Reddit and whilst every now and then I encounter a reddit thread with deleted items, in general it has not destroyed reddit, and I respect the right of those users to have deleted their digital comments.
I rate respect for user wishes over the importance of maintaining historical threads integrity on HN.
There's even more hubris in expecting individual rights to outweigh the value of a community in every instance.
Who signed up for the account, typed out the post, and clicked Publish?
What do you think about people in real life who will never forget something that you said or did, even after you no longer like it.
I think it's just being an adult.
As to how far they’ll go, they’ve threatened companies with billion dollar fines if they don’t delete references to crimes.
Being an adult, I believe, includes following the law.
Removing attribution to a username is not the same as deleting what was said.
Right, and the flipside is that not being able to delete comments makes people think a bit more carefully before posting, which improves the quality of the comments and the site.
People should be allowed to look back on a discussion and say "hmmm.... seems an ill considered and negative comment, I'm going to delete it".
As it stands, an ill considered comment is set in stone after 2 hours.
Ok, but what's the argument? What specific incentive for good comments or disincentive for bad comments is there with such a system? If anything, there's no disincentive for ill considered comments because you can always come back at any time to clean up your bad behaviour, but in the moment of commenting, there's nothing holding you back. Compare that with:
> As it stands, an ill considered comment is set in stone after 2 hours.
Which is a clear disincentive for making ill considered comments. Having such a system in place certainly makes me consider my comments more carefully before posting.