Retraction-with-the-strikethrough is like divorce to deletion’s annulment. When I delete comments, here are some motives not addressed by retraction:
I got simuposted by someone whose comment was similar and as good or better, and want to quietly remove the excess without leaving any clutter. (Or, I double-posted myself.)
I realize that I said something really, really stupid and don’t want to admit to having said anything in the first place.
The only reply to my comment is from a source I don’t want to interact and I wish to remove myself from the thread, rather than being tempted to abuse mod powers for the purpose of not interacting with the source.
I haven’t actually changed my mind, but I decided that I didn’t want to air the contents of the comment in a public forum, or someone else complained of a privacy violation; I don’t want to draw attention to there ever having been a comment in the relevant location.
It’s possible that comments with children, especially with several children, should exhibit more limited behaviors than those without; but the retraction/editing options are not sufficient.
The second one there is why I’d like deletion back, or at least the ability to make a post anonymous. My sanity and intelligence has a lot of time variance.
That sounds like a fairly strong argument for restoring deletion of comments without children.
I hear you on the rest. If we restore delete for childless comments but leave it out for comments with children, I think we’re balancing the cost to others of the broken conversation vs the ability to pretend you never spoke—your remaining edit ability means you can remove everything but the trace showing that you once spoke. I’m not sure how to make that decision, but am inclined to bow to public opinion. Can you see if you can raise some evidence for me that the community prefers one over the other?
Retraction-with-the-strikethrough is like divorce to deletion’s annulment. When I delete comments, here are some motives not addressed by retraction:
I got simuposted by someone whose comment was similar and as good or better, and want to quietly remove the excess without leaving any clutter. (Or, I double-posted myself.)
I realize that I said something really, really stupid and don’t want to admit to having said anything in the first place.
The only reply to my comment is from a source I don’t want to interact and I wish to remove myself from the thread, rather than being tempted to abuse mod powers for the purpose of not interacting with the source.
I haven’t actually changed my mind, but I decided that I didn’t want to air the contents of the comment in a public forum, or someone else complained of a privacy violation; I don’t want to draw attention to there ever having been a comment in the relevant location.
It’s possible that comments with children, especially with several children, should exhibit more limited behaviors than those without; but the retraction/editing options are not sufficient.
The second one there is why I’d like deletion back, or at least the ability to make a post anonymous. My sanity and intelligence has a lot of time variance.
That sounds like a fairly strong argument for restoring deletion of comments without children.
I hear you on the rest. If we restore delete for childless comments but leave it out for comments with children, I think we’re balancing the cost to others of the broken conversation vs the ability to pretend you never spoke—your remaining edit ability means you can remove everything but the trace showing that you once spoke.
I’m not sure how to make that decision, but am inclined to bow to public opinion. Can you see if you can raise some evidence for me that the community prefers one over the other?
Sounds good, except there’s that nasty race condition.
Was a poll feature added somewhere that I haven’t run into yet, or shall I do it the old-fashioned way?
A poll feature is still planned but not scheduled. The old-fashioned way still works.
Thanks.