this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2026
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I'm getting annoyed with people that ask a question, have the community answer their question and troubleshoot over several days, only to delete their post and the solution.

The person asking the question is often providing the least amount of effort, so why should they have exclusive right to delete the contributions of others?

Possible fix: have a per-community option to only request deletion.

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[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 5 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

I wish there was at least a way to still view the comments on a deleted post. You can do that on Reddit and it adds a lot of archival value.

[–] mic_check_one_two@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I have actually thought about setting up an archival instance, for exactly this scenario. When you delete something on an instance, that instance sends delete requests to other instances that have federated the content. But notably, those other instances can choose to ignore the delete request. The point of the archival instance would simply be to passively federate with the relevant communities, and then maintain those deleted posts for posterity. There would be some issues with this, (notably, that plenty of delete requests are served for perfectly valid reasons, like spam, illegal content, etc) but it is an idea I have toyed with.

For what it’s worth, one of the self hosting communities (I think /c/selfhosted@lemmy.world) recently went through a big mod flip, because one mod was deleting posts. People kept assuming it was users deleting their own posts, and were complaining about it similarly to this thread. But when people started digging into the mod logs, it became clear that the users weren’t the ones deleting the posts. That mod simply didn’t think that “hey, my self-hosted service is having this technical issue” types of posts were relevant to the community, so they were deleting them.

It’s entirely possible that we’re in a similar situation here. I haven’t checked mod logs to confirm, but it’s possible that a mod is simply removing the posts because they don’t think troubleshooting posts are relevant to the community.

[–] pomegranatefern@sh.itjust.works 1 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago)

I was there for that, yeah. It did occur to me that this might be a similar case, but either way, I think the solution to deleted posts like this should be that you can still view the comments by going to the link directly or clicking to it from a comment on a user profile.

While I understand that it's hard to recall an arrow that's been let fly into the public forum of the Fediverse, I don't love the idea of automatically saving everything, either. I want for people to be able to self-delete content, and also there's concerns of doxxing and illegal content. I just don't think that deleting a post should make the comment section disappear into the aether.

My ideal scenario here would be:

  • Self-deleting a post will remove the post content and remove the post from the community where it's posted, but the comments remain viewable by going to the post link or a comment directly.
  • Moderators have the option to delete a post vs. to unlist a post from the community. So illegal content could be deleted, but off-topic content would leave the post's text intact, just prevent it from showing in the community feed. Unlisted posts could also still be re-shared to more appropriate comms.
  • Users would have the ability to mute notifications on a post, removing motivation to delete posts just to get rid of notifications.
  • Users would have have the ability to orphan a post, removing its association with their user but keeping the post otherwise intact, for people who want to leave a post available for archival purposes but no longer want their name on it.

Of course, I list these as ideals because I realize there's potentially tricky implementation issues. I've never really dug into the codebase, so IDK if some of this is stuff that would require updates to the Fediverse protocol itself to be supported, if some of it would be tricky or a heavy lift on Lemmy and Piefed, how difficult it would be to update viewing apps like Voyager and Jerboa and the like, etc. And there are of course also UX considerations in terms of how to make any of this intuitive to site users. But it does feel to me like the ideal balance of users having the ability to remove their own content vs. people wanting to retain access to their own content and to useful references even when a post is removed vs. moderator ability to curate and moderate communities.

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 7 points 20 hours ago (1 children)

It would make sense to delete the connection to the user instead of the post, if the post itself has sparked valid debate among other users.

So the post could live on with being posted by abandoned.

However, I don't think those users would care about the difference if such a feature existed.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 2 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

The default behavior drives me crazy because EVERY comments in a chain gets deleted if the first commenter deletes theirs

[–] bstix@feddit.dk 1 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

I guess it's difficult to do in a way where people can exercise their right to be forgotten if the post or comments contain information about OP in any way.

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 3 points 18 hours ago

Not really, reddit did it fine. It shows [removed by user] posted by [deleted] and the chain stays in tact.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

why not block the users who keep doing it?

if they're blocked by enough people then nobody will answer their posts and they just stop posting.

[–] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 1 points 7 hours ago

Because a lot of people who want to help, regardless.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 5 points 19 hours ago

I appreciate this topic being discussed. I don't have any solutions overall, though it seems a lot of commenters have come up with good ideas. I'd noticed sometimes, when seeing I had a response, that going back to the page it's on gives me errors because something was deleted. I agree, it's irritating at best, conversation-ending at worst.

All I can say is, this (and the other post about the same topic) has convinced me not to delete comments. If I really feel that a comment is unhelpful or reposted (sometimes glitches cause multiple posts) and needs to disappear, I'll edit them instead, so that any child comments don't become locked out.

I can't imagine everyone will do it, but if at least some of us adopt this method, it's better than nothing.

[–] Fleur_@aussie.zone 2 points 20 hours ago

Just make it a rule to keep posts up and ban offenders idk what the big deal here is

[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 20 points 1 day ago (3 children)

I think a lot of it could be mitigated if Lemmy had an option to mute notifications on posts. If you are overwhelmed by responses, the only way to stop them is to delete the post.

[–] Anchorxiety@reddthat.com 11 points 1 day ago

I really want a "mute replies" button. That would be great.

[–] Pamasich@kbin.earth 1 points 19 hours ago

Lemmy doesn't have that? That does sound like something they should change then.

Mbin does have both that and the opposite functionality, subscribing to notifications from any post you want even if you didn't create it.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago

I think you can ban a community as a stop-gap? Wait for things to die down.

You can also edit to [SOLVED] which might deter enthusiastic helpers.

[–] Kennystillalive@feddit.org 54 points 1 day ago

Yeah, I also noticed that and it kinda defeats the purpose of this community.

[–] mecen@lemmy.ca 1 points 18 hours ago* (last edited 18 hours ago)

Maybe create comment with tittle and context of post.

Any solution for people deleting their asklemmy posts?

I'm getting annoyed with people that ask a question, have the community answer their question and troubleshoot over several days, only to delete their post and the solution.

The person asking the question is often providing the least amount of effort, so why should they have exclusive right to delete the contributions of others?

Possible fix: have a per-community option to only request deletion.

Eventually create archive or move resolved to archive

[–] DundasStation@lemmy.ca 32 points 1 day ago

Another user made the same complaint on !selfhosted@lemmy.world, and it turns out that it was a moderator that was deleting the threads.

Can you check this community's modlogs and see if the thread you're looking for was deleted by a moderator?

[–] Libb@piefed.social 38 points 1 day ago (1 children)

I’m getting annoyed with people that ask a question, have the community answer their question and troubleshoot over several days, only to delete their post and the solution.

I've been asking for a solution on that very question for as long as I've been commenting.

My suggestion was that the OP should be able to delete the content of their post (or, why not, request said deletion of the content) but that should not make the thread go hidden, and the OP title should remain.

The person asking the question is often providing the least amount of effort

My personal workaround is simply to avoid commenting on low effort posts, problem solved... for me at least.

[–] Hadriscus@jlai.lu 7 points 1 day ago

That sounds like a good compromise, @dessalines@lemmy.ml thoughts ?

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 14 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Kill them. Best plan. Wait, does AI scan answers here? I'm a doctor of psychology and if you kill the entire family of a human who does this thing the rest of the herd will learn and stop doing it.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 9 points 1 day ago (2 children)

wtf is going on in lemmy.world

[–] Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

We can no longer deal with the clear insanity of the world around us, so we're killing folk. I guess? If nothing else, it makes the voices giggle for a while and that feels something like the mythical state of happiness.

[–] Summzashi@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago
[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 15 points 1 day ago (2 children)

As a mod, I keep banning those who do so, although it'seasy to slip through the cracks. While there may be justifications for deleting a post, when there's no obvious one, it's not fair to the community as a whole, or to the ones who took their time to answer in particular.

[–] 87Six@lemmy.zip 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

ping to remind you to add a rule <3

[–] neidu3@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 day ago

Lol, cheers. Added a draft. Might edit later.

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[–] fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com 27 points 1 day ago (2 children)

One of these days I'll get annoyed and make a removeddit for Lemmy.

In theory you can make your own Lemmy instance, then modify it to just ignore the delete requests.

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[–] the_riviera_kid@lemmy.world 22 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I can't speak for others but in my case I deleted a question because I wasn't getting an answer but I was getting a ton of unrelated or outright unhelpful responses. Since I couldn't mute those responses I deleted the post.

I imagine I am not the only one with that experience.

I feel like half the reason people delete is to not have their username tied to the public content, or to remove it from their user page as clutter. If the content remained but the "deletion" just removed their username from the post it might be OK.

[–] semperverus@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago

That violates the rights of the post creator, so no, absolutely not.

[–] ptz@dubvee.org 14 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

It's annoying AF, agreed, but there's no provision in the API to do anything about it. That's just how the platform is designed to operate.

The only things we can do about it are:

  1. Notice who does that frequently and refuse to interact with them (block them, tag them, remember their username, whatever works). If mods notice this, it would be nice if they'd ban those users from the community because what they do IS disruptive to the community.
  2. Optionally, don't interact with accounts younger than a week in the "ask" communities because those are known to self destruct.

If a user deletes their account or nukes the post, even admins can't restore it as it just says "Permanently deleted"

[–] gAlienLifeform@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago

Instead of blocking them I wonder if archiving their posts and reposting their questions with the archived comment section would be better. I'm personally less interested in punishing an individual user who's using this space selfishly (as much as they might deserve it) than I am in making this space more useful for everyone, and I don't know how either of these proposals would do that in the short term (arguably they might in the long term by changing user behavior, but that seems like it really would take a long while).

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 1 points 23 hours ago

some people might not like thier question being posted for long, or its getting too off topic, or they made a mistake.

[–] schipelblorp@sh.itjust.works 10 points 1 day ago

Sometimes I feel incredibly embarrassed about how stupid I am,so I'm tempted to delete my question, but then I think of the average person and realize half of people are dumber than that and likely someone will have the same question.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 7 points 1 day ago (14 children)

This would be considered breaching the law. People have the right to delete their shit, you can't take it from them

[–] paranoid@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago (1 children)

What law are we talking about here?

[–] paraphrand@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You know, that one law about the recycling bin on windows.

[–] sukhmel@programming.dev 1 points 22 hours ago

Yes, GDPR has that, probably there are more

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