Re: The ability to delete

Not even Janitors can directly delete nodes. The founding forefathers deemed this to be a particularly worrysome power, to be used sparingly.

If you have authored a node that you wish to have deleted, consider the node for deletion using the moderation nodelet. Give a compelling reason, because folks will have to vote on it. And it will need to accumulate a slightly negative XP.

It is problematic to delete nodes that have replies. Since it's impossible to know if someone is in the middle of typing a reply to a node that is about to be deleted, there exists the potential for race conditions that could leave replies floating without parents, and thus without context.

Dave

Comment on Re: The ability to delete

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Re^2: The ability to delete by kiat (Vicar) on Oct 22, 2005 at 16:37 UTC
It is problematic to delete nodes that have replies. Since it's impossible to know if someone is in the middle of typing a reply to a node that is about to be deleted, there exists the potential for race conditions that could leave replies floating without parents, and thus without context. Yes, I understand it's problematic, which is why I thought the delete feature should only apply when certain conditions are met, such as when it has not yet been responded to. I appreciate your responding, thanks.	[reply]
Re^3: The ability to delete by eric256 (Parson) on Oct 23, 2005 at 03:53 UTC
The problem is, as was pointed out, you can't know if someone is in the process of replying while you are in the process of deleting. ;) Plus I think the implementation would be kind of worrisome since you would want to make absolutly sure there was no loop hole to allow deletion of nodes. In other words, if no one can delete nodes then you don't have to worry about securing the method of deletion. If any one group can delete nodes then it becomes a security concern. Maybe thats false reasoning on my part but at the moment it seems legit to me. ;) ___________ Eric Hodges	[reply]
Re^4: The ability to delete by kiat (Vicar) on Oct 23, 2005 at 04:42 UTC
Let's say I just wrote a reply A but changed my mind and would like to delete A. Assuming I'm fast enough and my reply has not been responded to - whether getting a sub-reply or receiving votes, it should be possible for me to delete A. Say while in the process of deleting A, another user composes a reply to it. When he's done and clicks Submit, A has already disappeared so his submission should fail and he should get a message saying the parent reply no longer exists. It's a very small benefit to have, so I guess it doesn't justify the troubles to tweak it.	[reply]
Re^2: The ability to delete by demerphq (Chancellor) on Oct 24, 2005 at 11:20 UTC
Not even Janitors can directly delete nodes. The founding forefathers deemed this to be a particularly worrysome power, to be used sparingly. The gods themselves barely ever delete stuff. Even when its useless infrastructure code that will never be used again we don't delete. I'd make an educated guess that ive deleted more nodes here than any other god and they have been exclusively infrastructure nodes, and mostly not even "real" infrastructure, but patches. And nowadays we dont even delete patches. I say all of this just to emphasize your point. We delete practically nothing on this site. Its a general policy that has worked well and that is unlikely to change. --- $world=~s/war/peace/g	[reply]