Access your community posts

[cesy]

Title:
Access your community posts

Area:
communities, privacy

Summary:
Allow you to delete a community post you no longer have access to.

Description:
Sometimes, a user posts something in a community under members lock, and then an admin later removes them from that community. This means the user no longer has control of their own post.

For comments in that situation, the recent comments page and links in your email will still work. However, there is no equivalent for entries.

Allowing the user to access or edit their post would be difficult and controversial. However, allowing you to delete your own content even if you can no longer access it is already established behaviour for comments.

I'd propose adding a "Recent Community Entries you posted" page along the lines of the "Recent Comments you posted", with links to the entries and links to delete them.

This would have the downside that any comments to that post would then disappear. However, this is already true of community entries in general - this is simply a logical extension of the behaviour.

Poll #4291 Access your community posts

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 54

View Respondents

This suggestion:

View Answers

Should be implemented as-is.
24 (44.4%)

Should be implemented with changes. (please comment)
4 (7.4%)

Shouldn't be implemented.
14 (25.9%)

(I have no opinion)
10 (18.5%)

(Other: please comment)
2 (3.7%)

Comments

[matgb]

I disagree with this. To be honest, I disagree with letting people delete their comments on my journal or comm if they leave, but that's a lost fight that isn't worth revisiting.

I'm thinking of setting up a comm on here that would run as a group blog, with a small number of contributors, some of whome may want to leave at some point, indeed, some may be staff members at a local museum that runs a film festival.

If the staff change, but their replacement continues to write stuff, I don't want to lose the content by an old staffer, if it was written for the blog, and submitted to the blog, it's for the blog.

If it is to be implemented, then please allow admins an option to disable it on comm creation and a notification for new members that it's been disable, some comms are 'communities', but others are more tightly focused, and lost content, especially if it was commissioned content, might leave annoying holes in the comm/blog.

[kyrielle]

This - there could well be communities where doing that would violate the spirit and continuity of the community.

[cesy]

Yes. However, it's already possible to delete your comm posts one-by-one, provided you can find them, which would also violate the spirit and continuity of the community. This is only worse because it makes it easier.

[kyrielle]

Yep. But then, the current mess at LJ is over something that only makes crossposting easier - cut and paste always worked. What is easily accessible and set up not only makes it more likely to be done, it sends a message about acceptability of that action - the site encourages it by making it easy.

And for the majority of comms this probably should be easy...but maybe not all. Unless Dreamwidth isn't intended for that use - which is possibly a decision that could be made, but it does seem otherwise well suited.

[cesy]

In some ways I like the idea of an admin option to disable it. However, would that also cover the existing ability to delete your comm posts one-by-one? That could be very controversial.

[matgb]

I think it probably should be possible, but possibly not for extant comms without some sort of user agreement.

I used to run a group blog on a self hosted wordpress. I couldn't afford hosting renewal when it was on hiatus, and the backup file is only on a harddrive currentl innaccessible.

But the posts were under my control and original author control, but if I removed an author (done once) they lost control, and to be honest if I knew someone was deleting their posts I'd have removed their ability to do so, unless they'd discussed it with me first.

If you leave or are expelled from a comm, then you lose privileges in that comm, including the privilege to remove your posts. That's my view on it, but I do know others would have a fundamentally opposed view, so I suspect it needs to be an option on creation, that perhaps would be implemented after a cutoff point for existing comms?

Sticky one. Although given I'd be doing everything publically anyway, authors wouldn't lose access to their posts to see/reply anyway, that'd defeat the object.

[boosette]

If you leave or are expelled from a comm, then you lose privileges in that comm, including the privilege to remove your posts.

I agree with this. However, I think the ability to disable emailed comments on a post Person no longer has access to/in a comm Person has been booted from would be useful.

[arethinn]

IAWTC. Similar to how I felt about the idea to give the individual poster control over whether comments were turned on/off on a comm post and not the comm owner/moderator, I feel that the comm owner should be able to have complete control over what's in the comm. If you post in a community you are ceding some measure of control over your post to that person(s), is my feeling.

[charmian]

I think that this situation can/should be evaded better with, perhaps, an option more like Tumblr's submit function, where the users can submit a post to the admin, which would then be posted by the admin. In that situation, the admin would then as author control the post, which would eliminate the problem.

[matgb]

Don't like that though. When I write a post on a group blog, depending on the blog it'll be put forward by me without admin approval, by an admin after I've written it, but in my name, or by account 'guest' (created in that name on WP). I most dislike the last, because then I can't find them.

Having that as an option would be good, but personally I wouldn't like it or want it, the current system of moderated approval or open access posting is really good and suits most purposes I can think of.

[charmian]

Hmm, couldn't that part be solved by having it be tagged automatically? Or by having it posted automatically by a dummy account (plus tagging with the name of the original author)?

[matgb]

Could be solved, yes, but not a good solution.

For a semi-pro blog, the tags should be what the post's about, the author is metadata, but completely different metadata, and I wouldn't want my tag cloud dominated by author names, which is very likely.

I like tag clouds, I don't like to see one massive tag and a bunch of ant tracks.

And the dummy account idea is both hassle and extra work for everyone, id I write on a comm, I want the credit in the standard manner, having admins create dummy accounts that then point to me is an extra, unneccessary, step.

[charmian]

I simply think it's too much of a violation of the normal means of posting on DW to ever take away the right to delete a post, however. Maybe orphaning would work in some situations, however.

[jumpuphigh]

I checked "I have no opinion" but it's not so much that I have no opinion but that I can see both sides of the argument and haven't made up my mind yet.

[susanreads]

+1. Being able to find my posts in communities would be worth it regardless of the deletion question, though.

[jumpuphigh]

Being able to find my posts in communities would be worth it

I agree!

[matgb]

Yes. Actually, I ought to check this is a listed planned improvement, else I'll submit it later, on WP powered blogs, you can normally type /author/username on the main url to get all the posts by that person, which is really useful. You can also get feeds for posts by just that person, which is even more useful for some purposes.

[cesy]

I'm reasonably sure it isn't planned yet, and it would both be useful, and reduce the need for this suggestion.

[rainbow]

I like this idea very much; I feel everyone should be able to maintain control of their own words, and I hadn't considered that people who'd left communities and weren't welcome back were unable to do so.

[ninetydegrees]

I'd like it if this was integrated to Edit Entries (and that'd be another way to make this page more useful).

[pauamma]

I'm not sure how you define "recent", but I'd like to have that option for all entries I posted to a comm, not just the ones that are recent enough to be in the "recent entries" list.

[ariestess]

I'm actually really torn on this one. On the one hand, once it's on the comm, you lose some control over it. On the other hand, if it's my content, I want to be able to control it. Now, if I know I'm leaving a comm by my own choice, I have the choice to delete my posts. If I'm booted from a locked comm, I don't have that luxury. So yeah, really torn here, and I do realize that doesn't help with making any decisions here...

[trixieleitz]

If you know the URL of the entry, can't you still delete it by reconstructing the edit URL? It would be something like http://www.dreamwidth.org/editjournal?journal=commname&itemid=###

Or does deleting via that link need current posting access?

Even if it is possible to delete that way, it would still be nice to have a way of listing your recent community entries.

[cesy]

Possibly, but you wouldn't normally know the URL if you no longer have access to the comm, unless you have old email notification of comments to the post.

[triadruid]

Having been booted from a community, I think I'm in favor of the ability to delete posts you've made even if you can't do anything else with them anymore. It seems to gel with the rest of the "your content is YOUR content" ethos, which I value more than the sacrosanctness of any given community.

[solitarywalker]

Why not just always give people access to things they posted, even in communities they're no longer members of? (I suppose it is reasonable to block people from editing their posts to communities they are no longer members of, though.)