Ownership of posts to a Thread.

[NurseMaxine]

Recently a partner of mine and I had an unfortunate missunderstanding which we were able to resolve amicably, but not before my partner, who was the originator of the thread decided to delete it, which as I understand it, included deleting all of my posts, which I had invested a great deal of time in and wanted to review for purposes of self improvement . I want to emphasize that this question is not intended to be a reflection on my partner as we have grown though the situation, have newfound respect for one another, and plan to continue writing together. So here is the issue I wish to raise , which I believe has general interest. Who owns the posts in a thread? the orignator ? or the author of the posts?

I will be the first to acknowledge that in my 15 years on this sight, this has never concerned me until I actually wanted to retrieve my posts from a deleted thread and they are apparently irretrievable. It seems to me that in a thread with two partners, each as an interest in their contribution to the thread, and neither should be able to iretrievably delete the other's posts whether or not it was intentional.. I can see the logic behind either being able to take the thread out of view, but it seems to me that either should have the right to continue to view their own posts for at least a limited period of time.

I would be interested in others thoughts on the subject.

 

[Revelations]

Hi there. So both writers in a story have to agree to an RP being deleted or for RP posts to be deleted. Can you PM me with more details?

 

[Honey Blossom]

Thread owners are, unfortunately, able to delete any thread they have started. I would almost put this up as a suggestion that this would not be possible anymore - perhaps staff is able to edit the rights of users to make sure they cannot delete threads in just the established RP forums? Could be an idea to pursue, at least.

 

[Revelations]

Unfortunately this is not a lever I can press myself but I have been of the mind to ask about this in the first place, I'll get in touch with Vekseid since I i imagine it can't be too hard to actually do.

 

[Vekseid]

It's a question of what to devote staff time to - helping people housekeep their threads or recover situations like this.

 

[Sync]

For whatever my two cents' are worth here...I see an IF...THEN...ELSE situation arising through this.

IF <no other person has posted in owner's thread>
THEN <delete thread>
ELSE <block thread deletion>

The thread owner should be able to delete their own thread (it's all their own stuff that they "own")...UNLESS someone else has posted in it (the thread is no longer entirely their own). How you'd code that, though (assuming you'd want to), is way beyond me.

 

[Cat]

I do not mean any offense to this, but this feels like something that's more suited for individual one-on-one roleplay threads. If that's the case, it should be fairly straightforward to manage—everyone here is an adult and capable of deciding together whether a thread stays up or gets deleted. If the issue is more about staff bandwidth, maybe it's time to consider opening up staff applications. Having another set of eyes and a sharp mind on board could really help.

 

[NurseMaxine]

I think the solution starts with a published rule or policy. So that everyone knows what will happen when, or if, a thread is deleted . At that point we are adults and we can work things out. In my mind the simplest thing would be that if a thread is requested to be deleteted, access to it should be restricted to the participants immediately , and a pm sent to all participants notifying them they have (pick a period) say 5 days to save their content , and after the 5 day pause , delete it. As I said in my opening post, this is the first time in 15 years on this site that I have been impacted by it , Its not a huge deal , but it was inconvenient and unexpected, so it seemed worth a discussion.

 

[Honey Blossom]

I'm not familiar with the backend of Xenforo, but would this be something that could be altered in forum permissions per forum/per subset? Something like, users can delete threads they've created in any forum except the Established 1x1 subset?

 

[Fentanyl]

With some tinkering and trial/error, we've been able to adjust things to where a user CANNOT delete a thread that is in the actual roleplaying category in order to prevent situations like this from happening again. When it comes to matters of deleting threads with other writer's content on it, deletion requires consent from both parties before a staff member will remove the thread.

Permissions for deleting threads (such as request threads and OOC threads) are the same as they were before.

Also, nothing is ever truly deleted. Staff can go back through deleted content and undelete them. If an issue like this arises in the future, don't hesitate to reach out to a staff member with assistance.