Character deletion currently wipes out everything that character created. That means (let me know if I missed something):
- posts in a PM, chat, or roleplay
- roleplays or chats the character owns
- PMs the character initiated
- comments in feedback (but not feedback itself, since it's account-bound)
Always deleting everything is not ideal.
Some of us want to delete our stuff for personal reasons, and that wish should be respected. However, sometimes we don't want that for our own posts. I'd like to highlight some cases against always deleting everything:
- I have many characters and a character limit to manage. Some characters will come and go, but if I've roleplayed as one I can never delete that character without also wiping out half or all of the roleplay, even if I no longer want to use them or have them around. This means I now have "dead" character slots I won't use and can't get back unless I wipe out material I want to keep. That's bothersome no matter how close I am to the character limit.
- When all of a character's feedback comments vanish, the public discourse around them usually stops making sense. Sometimes there's really important information in those posts, like a course of action we all agreed was a good one. This sends public discourse and development backwards and is flat-out bad for the site.
- When a character vanishes out of a group roleplay, it can stop making sense. This is very unfortunate for those remaining and can be very disruptive or destructive to ongoing continuities.
- When a publicly enjoyed room's owning character is deleted, the room's destroyed and everything in it lost. If this is a roleplay continuity, boom! Very unfortunate for the people involved.
There's alternatives to deletion. Posts can be dissociated from the character that made them: the profile link gets dropped, the name's left there, or optionally the name can be removed and replaced with "(user removed)". Room ownership can be handed over to someone else.
How should we handle character deletion?
This needs to balance two needs: people need to feel comfortable using the site, or they won't use it and it may earn a bad name. Also, deletion shouldn't unnecessarily damage the community.
I suggest the following to balance them out, and it may not be the best solution, but it's something. When you choose to delete a character, you're given the following options:
- Rooms you own will have another character put in charge. You can opt in to delete them all, instead. Or, you can choose to see a list of your rooms, and pick "put someone else in charge" vs "delete" for each one.
- PMs will be left dissociated with name intact. Same again otherwise: you can opt in to delete them all, or see a list and pick "dissociate" vs "delete" for each.
- Roleplay posts and Chat messages you choose again like PMs: dissociate, delete all, see a list and pick for each. (Roleplay posts and chat messages are two separate options.)
- Feedback comments have no option to delete. They are dissociated with name intact, to help discussions still make sense no matter how many characters get deleted, and there's no option to delete or anonymize because of how much damage that will do to the feedback section.
This means that everything you can delete has an option to quickly delete all of it, if you choose to.
For each category, the least damaging to the rest of the community is chosen: the option that keeps the stuff. You have to opt in for deletion. This takes advantage of the default effect, wherein people are simply inclined to go with the default if presented with various options. That way only people who really want deletion will take it.
There's an outlying scenario: if multiple characters sharing the same name post to the same channel over time, and then are deleted, we should distinguish them. Therefore in the one channel we should append a #1, #2, #3 etc to distinguish different characters who shared the same name. The # should be visibly separate from the character name so that it can't be spoofed.