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delete user from askbot?

What will happen if a user wants to delete his account?

I assume that he should send an email to the admin? But still, deleting the account should not imply that all his questions/answers also to be deleted since this is not helpful for the community.

So, what should be the solution? I see that through django console, you can delete users from the database, but all his questions/answers also are deleted.

Do you have any good ideas what should be the proper way?

alexandros.z's avatar
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alexandros.z
asked 2012-06-09 16:24:52 -0600
todofixthis's avatar
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todofixthis
updated 2012-07-28 10:40:28 -0600
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If we want to keep all the content of a user but not the user himself (which is a very good choice since his content might be valueable), I think an easy way is to just go to admin panel and change/delete few things about him, but not the actual user:

  1. Change his personal stuff, mainly username and email, so that he is not recognisable and does not receive any notifications. This can be done in yoursite.com/admin/auth/user/.
  2. Delete his login methons, so that he cannot login with this account anymore. This can be done in yoursite.com/admin/django_authopenid/userassociation/ - delete everything that refers to this user.
  3. If your site supports uploaded avatars, delete also his avatar (if his has any). You can do this from here yoursite.com/admin/avatar/avatar/
  4. Go to his profile and change his subscriptions to no mail, so that askbot will never again try to send an email to him.
  5. (if there is anything I forget, please add here).

This way you have pseudo-deleted him but the record in database is still there, all his content is there and he is not related to all these any more.

zaf's avatar
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zaf
answered 2012-06-09 19:48:18 -0600
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Those are good points, now "blocked" user status hides profile from the list of users, user's url and his/her "about" sections are hidden as well. I think we should also hide the user name. It is worth also hiding avatar and stopping email as you said.

Evgeny's avatar Evgeny (2012-06-09 22:12:31 -0600) edit
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Does "blocked" status only hide the user from non-admins? I experimentally tried blocking a user on my site, but I was still able to see it in the list of users (on the People page).

todofixthis's avatar todofixthis (2012-07-28 10:43:14 -0600) edit
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I like the way StackExchange does this, actually. When a user is deleted, her posts remain and are attributed to her username, but her username only appears as plain text (not a hyperlink), and her profile can no longer be accessed (even if you know the URL).

I notice that for all the different statuses that Askbot has for user accounts, there is no "hidden" or "deleted" status.

todofixthis's avatar
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todofixthis
answered 2012-07-28 10:43:26 -0600, updated 2012-07-28 10:44:25 -0600
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On askbot now there is "blocked" status - will be available in the upcoming release. The "blocked" status achieves some of the goals that you've listed, but not all, we could work on improving that.

Evgeny's avatar Evgeny (2012-07-28 12:07:46 -0600) edit
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A really "delete" option is for German Askbot Installations a big need, is it possible to add a feature for users to delete themself in the profileview or so?. (Delete of all personal data like Realname, Mailaddress and so on, old postings are ok) It's a German Law. :(

Edur's avatar Edur (2012-09-29 17:32:23 -0600) edit
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