What are the different delete methods?
When you delete a user, you have a couple of different options:
- Keep User Content: Delete the user but keep the user's content.
- Blank User Content: Delete the user and replace all of the user's content with a message stating the user has been deleted. This gives a visual cue that there is missing information.
- Delete User Content: Delete the user and completely remove all of the user's content. This may cause discussions to be disjointed, but is the best option for removing SPAM.
Let's say that you want to delete the user, but keep the content (the first option):
A post that (pre-deletion) looked like this:
After the user is deleted (but content is kept) will look like this:
When you click on "Deleted User" or click on "@shaunatest" it would bring you to the same landing page:
http://community.company.com/dashboard/home/deleted
If you choose the second option from the above (blank user content), a post that looked like this:
After hitting 'delete user' and hitting 'blank user content', the post looks like this:
Note that the title remains, though the body of the post and comment have been replaced with 'the user and all related content has been deleted' .
Please note as well, that System, who has not been deleted, quoted ShaunaTest, and the quote remains since the quote is attributed to System (not ShaunaTest).
The last option, Delete User Content, can be effective for really bad users or spammers, but can result in disjointed discussions, now that some comments are missing.
With this last and most drastic option, a post that looked like this:
Will now look like this:
And comments that were written by Shaunatest (deleted user) would just be gone altogether.
This is great for spam posts and wiping out users who never contributed anything useful, but can be problematic for users who posted good content.
Please note that this is also problematic if the user you are deleting authored discussions or questions with lots of comments or answers, as those comments/answers would be deleted as well as they would have no main discussion attached.
A way to side step this is to use the “Change Author” addon to change the author to a stub user prior to deletion.
