Comment deletion notice.

[ame]

Title:
Comment deletion notice.

Area:
comments, management, entries

Summary:
Essentially, since we get notified every time someone comments to our journal, why not have a notice if someone deletes a comment?

Description:
I'm sure there are people here who are glued to their journals as much as I wish I was. Comments come and go but there never has been a notification for DELETED comments in any incarnation of the journal site, whether it's LiveJournal or InsaneJournal. I know people tend to say stupid things and delete the comment, or post the wrong thing and later regret it, but it'd be nice to have a way to keep track of both comments posted and deleted.

The only bad sides to this (that I can see) are the workload it would put on the email gateway system and the spam it could potentially create in individuals' inboxes. The optio for this could be opt-in or whichever function that people feel most comfortable. I personally would really quite like something like this.

Poll #2042 Comment deletion notice.

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 36

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
14 (38.9%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (11.1%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
9 (25.0%)

(I have no opinion)
8 (22.2%)

(Other: please comment)
1 (2.8%)

Comments

[msilverstar]

The messages in my Inbox seem to change from name and date to a deleted note. I find this very disconcerting: my journal, I should at least know who and when.

[denise]

The reason for this is that once a comment is deleted, it's deleted -- you can't get the text back.

[kyrielle]

I find this very disconcerting and frustrating, too - I don't mind no text/not seeing the comment, but having the notification warp to be useless is somewhat aggravating. Is there a reason not to send the notification in such a way that the user name and time are preserved (in the notification, until I delete it) even if the comment is deleted? That's a separate suggestion, really, but since it came up here....

[denise]

It might be technically possible -- I'd have to check the code -- but the reason not to do it that way is so that if something's deleted it's deleted, in accordance with the privacy policy and generalized best-practice data retention policies.

[afuna]

If it were technically possible (and I don't know either *g*) would it help any if only the journal owner (entry poster+admins in a comm?) could see the original poster of the comment + entry it was posted to, in the notification?

[andrewducker]

Hmmm.

If someone comments on my journal, can I make it impossible for them to delete that comment?

[cesy]

No. It's their content, because they wrote it, so they can always delete it.

[matgb]

No--it's one of the things about LJ/DW that I both like and dislike over other platforms, where the blog owner specifically has control over comments (although I think Blogger allows you to delete if you post with a blogger account).

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'd be very unhappy if someone started deleting their comments from my journal.

[pauamma]

Conversely, I'd be very unhappy if someone attempted to prevent me from deleting my comments.

[ratcreature]

I wish the inbox remnant thing would just vanish together with the deleted comment. I get comments mailed, so I see them as mail as well as in the inbox, and usually don't have the effect that I wonder what a comment was, but whenever I delete a spam comment I need to do that in the journal and then clean up the empty wrapper.

[susanreads]

+1

[kutsuwamushi]

Coming to the party late, but... disagree.

I use the inbox remnants of deleted posts as a tool to enforce a "don't delete your posts when people disagree with you" rule on LJ. The notice lets me know someone deleted, and then a little detective work tells me who and what. Without that remnant, I'd have no way to track deletions.

I would be sad if that ability went away. I can imagine people on DW using it similarly.

[ratcreature]

Hm. Maybe it could be made so that at least if a comment was deleted while marked as spam (I don't think you can do that to your own comments, so it wouldn't affect your case) you don't have to delete the remnant in the inbox too? Comment spam is really the area where I find it most annoying to have to delete the same thing twice.

[the_shoshanna]

Ohh -- that explains why a bunch of comments on an LJ post I was tracking, which I didn't save the emails of because I figured they were in my inbox, have disappeared. Post was locked, I think, so I don't even have the "deleted" note, they just vanished. Damn. I mean, it makes sense, this is not a complaint!, but -- damn.

(Note to self: figure out how to archive in gmail while "deleting" from desktop IMAP client.)

[denise]

I'm not sure, but IIRC, if you are locked out of a post, the comment notifications turn to "You don't have access to this post" or something like, under the theory that if the OP makes something private, it should be private. (There were many such security concerns around the notification system.)

[the_shoshanna]

Hmmmm -- it is also possible that I am a complete idiot, didn't remember what I'd seen when I waded through my LJ inbox yesterday, and also probably didn't start tracking that post until after the comment I'm wishing I had a copy of had been posted anyway. (For the record, the OP turned off commenting; no comments are now visible on the post, but all the ones I was notified of are still in my inbox.)

I am an idiot. Move along!

(mor coffee pls?)

[afuna]

I know you can figure this out on your own, but I just finished setting up IMAP to my satisfaction, so I have the link handy. Here's the Gmail general help page on deleting messages from IMAP.

Hope it helps you as much as it did me *g*

[the_shoshanna]

Ahahahahahah, here I was being all "it's probably completely passive-aggressive to add that parenthetical, I can perfectly well look it up for myself, but maybe someone will be all TA-DA LET ME HELP YOU and I will never have to ask or look it up" and there you are! Thank you!

The really amusing part is that a) it turns out that's what was already happening, and all the emails that I've deleted from my IMAP client because I don't want to spend hard-drive space on them are still on the web in my gmail account, yay [I dislike the webmail interface intensely, so I virtually never go there], and b) I was a complete idiot in my original comment anyway.

I feel like I did a public pratfall and landed on a shiny new quarter.

[foxfirefey]

Hmm, because sending the text would be kind against the spirit of making sure comments that get deleted are gone, would it be sufficient if this notification linked you to what that comment was replying to, whether it be an entry or another comment in an entry, and who deleted it?

This would be really useful for community maintainers who have rules about people not deleting comments.

Another twist on this might be a notification if your comment ended up deleted by somebody else, or screened.

[yvi]

I didn't understand the suggestion as "send the text of the deleted comment" anyway, but as "send a notification that says 'comment xyz, which was located [here], was deleted by [user/mod]". I think this may need clarification by the OP.

[cheyinka]

Yeah, that's how I understood the suggestion too (voting "with changes" in case it's not what was meant)

[melannen]

Yes, I was thinking of this. If I can get notified when somebody edits a comment, it makes sense that I should get notified if they delete it - but just like the edit notification only has the edited text, I'd only expect the delete notification to have a notice that a comment originally at [this url] was deleted (and maybe the username, if it's in my journal or a community I mod.)

[ame]

Actually, this was what I had in mind. Why send the body of the comment when it's been deleted after it was already sent in the notification that the comment was posted?

[aveleh]

Yes, would be especially good to have a record of *who* deleted a comment, so you can tell if it's the commenter, the entry poster, or a moderator.

[pauamma]

Who would get notified? Poster of deleted comment? Poster of parent comment (if any)? Poster of entry? Comm PTB(*) (if posted to a comm)

FappropriateVO "PTB" - maintainers/moderators/admins/whatever

[matgb]

I'd vote whoever got a notification of the original comment, plus possibly mods in a comm, but that would be covered if we get the 'sub to all comments in my comm' option.

[pauamma]

Possibly the poster of the deleted comment too? (Since they don't normally get notified they posted a comment.)

[matgb]

That's true--my brain was thinking about deletions by the comment poster, but yes, definitely want to have the poster notified if someone else deletes--perhaps have a 'reason' box as incomment editing?

Sometimes deletions are made by mods &c for reasons and it'd be good if they can just delete & explain rather than have to reply, then delete both.