How do I delete my account/posts? | Page 2 | Fab Forum | The Beatles Bible

Ron Nasty said
@TheBeatlesJohn My understanding is that, if your account is deleted, your posts will show up as guest posts, and your former identity will disappear.

Myself, I cannot see Joe agreeing to the removal of every post that mentions your former identity, as that would involve removing posts not written by you. That would be incredibly unfair on those who have made those posts.

That said, mods are always able to edit posts and replace mentions of your earlier name with a replacement name. @Joe may even, and I’m not saying he can, be able to edit your sign-up identity with the use of admin tools.

Knowing who you are, I for one would be sorry to see you go, but understand you must have your reasons for wanting to sever from the name you signed up with. @Ahhh Girl, site detective and sleuth, should be able to find all mentions of your original name and any photos you want removed and be able to deal with those.

Give Joe and the mods a chance to work out if there is another way through this that keeps you with us.

I’m in contact via email with @TheBeatlesJohn and will try to work out a mutually agreeable outcome.

@Ron Nasty is right. I can delete an account, but I have two choices: a) change all posts to be Guest-authored, or b) delete all posts by that user. But that doesn’t deal with other people’s mentions of that person, quotes of their posts etc. It’s a headache whichever way you slice it. Also, if I chose option b) it would leave disjointed half-conversations which didn’t make sense, as we saw when @paulsbass culled all his posts. That’s the reason why I stopped allowing people to do it.

There’s also a concern that Google is showing the old username in results pages, but that will change in a week or so when they update their index. You could also ask Google for a name to be excluded should you wish, because their index has nothing to do with me. I can edit all third-party posts here that mention the old username, which I’d be willing to do although it would be hugely time-consuming.

On the wider question of whether someone should have the right to delete their account, I’m undecided. I can understand why a big company like Facebook would need a policy on it, because an account can become a liability which might affect people’s wider lives, but this is just a Beatles forum on which most people use assumed identities. As far as I know there’s no legal right supporting people’s demands to be forgotten – it’s a matter for site owners, and AFAIK Google’s recent right-to-be-forgotten ruling only applies to them.

I’ve purposefully minimised the rules and legal terms when people sign up, but from my perspective whatever people post here gives me (as site owner) non-exclusive rights to whatever gets posted. Non-exclusive means whoever wrote it still retains the copyright, but gives me an ongoing licence to publish/host it here. I’m not interested in reproducing or repurposing anything; you’re safe from exploitation. Perhaps I should clarify this in the forum rules section. I don’t know; I’m not a lawyer. I’d have thought it was common sense that if you post something on a forum, you grant the forum owner(s) an implicit right to continue publishing that content. But I also acknowledge that we’re (mostly) human beings who want to be happy, and I try to help people whenever I can unless it’s an unreasonable or difficult request.

I think all is done now, although Google’s index will take a while to reflect the changes. If anyone spots anything I’ve missed please PM or email me.