How to request account deleting?

How do I delete my account and all of my associated posts? I didn’t see an appropriate option in the profile/user preferences.

I found this.

https://forum.kicad.info/tos#13

Analog Life, LLC may terminate your access to all or any part of the Website at any time, with or without cause, with or without notice, effective immediately. If you wish to terminate this Agreement or your Forum.KiCad.Info account (if you have one), you may simply discontinue using the Website. All provisions of this Agreement which by their nature should survive termination shall survive termination, including, without limitation, ownership provisions, warranty disclaimers, indemnity and limitations of liability.

Basically, just stop using the site. I don’t think most forums remove content. If they did then threads would stop making sense because posts would be missing. Some threads that a person started would no longer have the original question. So it seems that you just stop using the site.

Hope that helps.

Thanks. I suppose that addresses the policy situation, so I appreciate you pointing that out to me.

While it does not apply to me, I feel like there is probably a GDPR-related aspect that should be considered in such a request. (I am surprised Discourse doesn’t have a “delete all” option.)

Regardless, I realized I could just delete my own posts and then obfuscate my profile information. So, I’ll take that approach.

Edit. Thwarted by a rate limiter.

I’m not particularly familiar with legal aspects. I prefer using logic. And using it I think the following:
Only personal data need being protected. Leaving the statement ‘forever’ on the forum of a user hiding under a nickname that does not disclose his personal data obviously does not disclose this data - nobody knows who is behind the statements on the forum.
If forum software protects the personal data of its current users well enough, it also protects well enough the data of users who simply stop posting on the forum.
Finding that a nickname equal to my name is free it was my personal decision to use my name as a nickname. So little of my personal data are disclosed but there are so many people having the same name as me…

First, please don’t. You have over 100 posts, and deleting them breaks discussions and makes them harder to follow. You also have 19 posts which are marked as the solution according to your profile.

Second, you can’t.
You can delete all your posts, but all edits are automatically saved in git by the forum software.

In overall, the concensus is that the information you post on a public forum becomes a part of that public forum. On some forums, deleting large numbers of posts, (even if it is only your own posts) are considered vandalism. And because Discourse saves all edits in git, they can be reversed. I am not a moderator and I do not know details of the policies of this KiCad forum.

I do not know what the reasoning is behind your intentions.
This forum has three official moderators: About - KiCad.info Forums
@eelik, @davidsrsb , @hermit and by putting an at sign before their names, they will get alerted and can help you with getting your options clear.

I just discovered that in this other thread, where you wrote:

I assume this thread is part of your reaction to my post in that other thread. I do not understand why this provokes such a strong reaction from your side.

Me too.
I used Protel 3 for many years, but I took designing PCBs from someone else, who just told me which functions to use and I never read Protel manual. I also never looked through all menu positions - I always had more urgent tasks then to learn extra (not needed) features of software. That way I didn’t know the ERC existed.
When I moved to KiCad I read all documentations and found ERC but as I didn’t needed it I didn’t used it (I also never used the tool to assign footprints to symbols and probably many other functions I don’t need and don’t remember).
Than starting (2017) to use this forum I found many threads begin with question about “Power input pin not driven by power output pin”. My conclusion was that people:

  • begin to use KiCad without even reading Getting Started manual,
  • are making a problem for themselves by using an unnecessary function.

My reaction to such posts were linking the Getting Started manual (at page about PWR_FLAG) and writing that my solution to this problem is to not use ERC.
I have been instructed several times by other users that it is better not to give such advice to a beginner because ERC may detect the mistakes he has made.
I didn’t understand it to mean that someone wanted to decide what I was allowed to write and what not. I wasn’t offended, I just stopped writing about the fact that I (for peace of mind) never, ever use ERC.
Remarking that you did something wrong is just a simple comment, not an attack on your independence.

I hope that @baldengineer doesn’t leave. I’ve always found him to be a positive influence in all forums where I’ve encountered him.

8 Likes

first of all, don’t go.
2nd… forums posts are generally not covered by GDPR and thus the request for a forum application and/or admin to purge based upon a GDPR request won’t be fulfilled.
GDPR is todo with person data so if you were to put your personal data into every single post then sure, yes, there would be a legal obligation to purge but since this would be the exception not the norm

If you honestly do not understand, please find someone who will explain to you how insulting and inappropriate your reply was. I tried to formulate an explanation, but I had trouble phrasing it politely enough that it was worth posting.

5 Likes

Well, you have mellowed since you first got here. :wink:

I hope he will stay too as I like his ‘AddOhms’ you tube channel as well and @baldengineer is a great ambassador for Kicad he shares his love of the software with over 200k subscribers and understand why he’s upset. Maybe a cultural thing ? dunno…
:mouse:

I completely understand why he was upset: he spent time making a post that was trying to help another user, and got told “don’t post if you don’t know the best answer”.

If not posting if you don’t know the best answer is not allowed, many people should get banned :slight_smile:

That said, I do think deleting one’s account over this is a bit of an extreme reaction.

7 Likes

No. 100 times no! He didn’t got told: “don’t post”.
When he said that he knew that there is a better way
he got told: “If you know there is a better way, then it’s better to not post the other way.”
So not the imperative/prohibitive mode to not post at all.
But only information that it is better to not write worse solutions if you know there are better one.

May be it is a problem with my English, but for me it doesn’t mean:
“don’t post if you don’t know the best answer”.
For me it has really nothing to do with posting when don’t knowing the best answer.
When don’t knowing the best answer you of course can post suggesting the best solution you know.
For me the heart of the statement lies in the condition at the beginning of the sentence (“If you know there is a better way”). In such case (and only in such case) it is better (only better! - not forbidden) to not describe the worse solution.
Do the native English speakers understand differently logic of this construction?

And I agree with that sentence.
Describing the worse way if you know that there is better way (have in mind this condition!) you can lead the questioner down the wrong path.

The problem comes down to the answer to the question: Is it better to be directed down the wrong path or not to be given such direction?
Answer may not always be unequivocal (I took this word from dictionary) but anyone who thinks it is better to not be directed the wrong path should conclude that the sentence what was the beginning of this story is simply true.

I am here with @paulvdh as I also don’t understand why sentence that for me is 100% true can provoke such a strong reaction.
I am trying to assume that this sentence can be understood differently but can’t find such a way of understanding it.

2 Likes

Basically, @paulvdh did what is known as “junior modding.” He shouldn’t be telling other posters what content they can or can not post. It was rude and disrespectful.

5 Likes

I feel like people are reading ‘it can’t be written’ when paulvdh writes ‘it is better not to write it’.
For me this is the fundamental difference changing the tone of the entire statement. For others not?
Are these two phrases understood more or less the same in English?
I could suppose that paulvdh see between them the same fundamental difference as me.

And as I have written in post 7:

I didn’t take it as rude, but as a hint to take into account that my suggestion might not be good for a beginner.

I agree. …And I wonder his reason why. I don’t expect to ever learn, and it does not seem like anything he contributed would be deemed to be regrettable.

Hi, Piotr

I think that answering with the best that you know can help a great discussion, even though you (or I) do not have the best answer. It is not as simple as one person has all the questions and another has all the answers. I might have a related answer along with a question. It promotes discussion, and many participants can learn…

1 Like

I generally agree with it, but here the exact question is a little different:
What is better to do (not what you should do but what is better to do) if you know that there is a better solution but you don’t remember details. Is it better to suggest your worse solution or is it better to mention the better one with information that you can’t tell details.
I think people can have here 2 opposite answers but paulvdh thinks that better is to not write the worse solution and (in my opinion) he simply said that.

1 Like