New feature Deactivating membership but not deleting posts

[Planet Jackson]

Currently Nabble has the option for a member to deactivate their membership thereby deleting all their posts.  I propose Nabble offer an option to deactivate the membership while maintaining all posts intact on the forum.  If a forum were in existence for at least a year with very active membership, some members might post several thousand posts.  The deletion of even one or two accounts would annihilate the integrity of a topic or forum.  Forum owners should have the option to check on or off whether they want a member's total posts to be deleted.  Members would still have the right to edit or delete individual posts prior to deactivating their accounts.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

This is not so simple. When a user wants to delete his/her account, they really want to delete everything (otherwise, the deactivation would be meaningless). We can't leave this option on the hands of each forum owner because they don't own the contents created by another user. So this decision belongs to the post author and we show a big warning before the account is deactivated.

[Planet Jackson]

Actually, I disagree.  Whenever someone posts to a large site such as CNN, NBC, or the like, that site owns anything they submit, much like a letter to the editor.  Likewise, I think anything posted in a forum I or anyone else owns should "belong" to that forum owner insomuch as they forum owner has the right to determine if it should remain posted or deleted, not the original poster.  Once it's out there, it's out there.  I do agree the posters should be able to edit individual posts, but a blanket deletion of all posts would leave gaping holes in the archives of an active site.  I respectfully disagree with you on this.

[Hugo <Nabble>]

Has this actually happened to you, that someone who posted to your forum deleted their account?  I think this would be very rare.  There is no real reason for anyone to ever delete their account.  We only added this feature for those few obsessive/paranoid users who insist on removing all traces of themselves from Nabble.  These users tend to be a support nightmare for us and if we remove their ability to remove their all of posts, they will harass us about it.

The one thing I think we should do is to make it clearer on the "Remove Your Account" page that there is no reason to most users to ever do this.