I was just reminded of a forum member whose name I hadn’t seen in a long time, so went looking for him by using the ‘author’ field in advanced search.

His username, however, simply does not appear. I didn’t know it was possible to get deleted. Does it happen automatically after a certain period of time?

The user list is incomplete, not even sure where it comes from! 🙂

I’m not on it, you’re not on it for example

Try https://singletrackworld.com/members/saxonrider/ to see their profile – naturally changing the name to be the one you are stalking… 😉

Does that work ?

Was expecting a flounce.
Is disappoint.

Is it possible to get yourself deleted from this forum?

They try. But they always come back…

There used to be a really nice laydee called DebZ who then came back as the much less nice DezB – which is why some of us still call her DebZ.

advanced search

hahahahahahahahahahaha

which is why some of us still call her DebZ

She ain’t coming back. Not never.

it’s not fred, or one of his aliases ??

That field in the “Advanced Search” is useless. You could try using the site: parameter in Google if you want to see what they’ve posted.

Someone did ask to have all their contributions deleted, believing it was a fundamental human right or something. They were told it wasn’t going to happen.

Immediate deletion occurs only when a forum member declares they have both faith and also use homeopathy. Neither sit well with the ‘everything in life must be black and white’ brigade.

Deletion might also be the case if one ever questions the human construct of science/fact/truth, the pharmaceutical industry/ western medicine and coffee. Although seemingly, it’s absolutely fine if you have had or have a girlfriend called Louise, which seems to nullify all of the above, which is why I can write this post.

saxonrider

always use google it’s far more reliable than this sites search engine 😉

It’s not possible to get deleted. Even banned accounts are banned for a specific amount time rather than permanently deleted.

A special case here is the spam killer. This does delete the user for all practical purposes, you can’t see them but they still exist and are visible to us. It also deletes every post they’ve ever made ever. We wouldn’t do this with a regular user as it obviously disrupts historical threads, folk will be having one-sided conversations (though we did decide once that it was worth taking the hit on a certain serial banee who wasn’t getting the message).

If you tell me who you were looking for I can look it up. Feel free to email / PM me if it’s a bit stalkery.

Slackalice has a girlfriend called Louise ?

If you also owned a webcam, that’s probably stw-proof that god does exist 😀

Someone did ask to have all their contributions deleted, believing it was a fundamental human right or something. They were told it wasn’t going to happen.

It’s a fairly regular occurrence TBH. We get maybe one a month, usually accompanied by an impotent threat of legal action. Because obviously that always gets people sympathetic to your cause.

Immediate deletion occurs only when a forum member declares they have both faith and also use homeopathy.

I’m imagining a time when that type of person actually existed, must o’bin crayzee times back then 😆

……..impotent threat of legal action.

You can put it in the hands of your lawyer, but it’ll never stand up in court.

folk will be having one-sided conversations

happened to me on bike magic, i could see my own posts, but no one else could, took me a day or so to twig why i was being ignored 😆

Kerazy times indeed ocb…

Had, not has. Had, for the record.

Interesting. Cougar, will GDPR change that?

Our work is starting to realise the headache of that and the myriad of places that we’re going to have to check and delete if someone plays the “i want to be forgotten” card. It becomes quite hard to refuse apparently, unless you can demonstrate a legal requirement you must retain that data.

If you tell me who you were looking for I can look it up

Joe Cocker, obvs.

Joe Cocker, obvs.

I’m fairly sure he’s still posting – it’s not like he’s dead is it?

Dunno TBH. I’m aware of the GDPR but haven’t looked into any implications yet. You can bet that Mark has though, he’s very savvy about such things (he has to be to deal with people being nobby*).

The “right to be forgotten,” AIUI, refers to search engines and not forums, it doesn’t apply here. Which is probably just as well, deleting every post a prolific poster has ever made over a period of years would be an act of gross vandalism, and even if we were to comply there’d be the issue of all the quoted text which would be impossible to remove reliably. And even if we were able to do it, it’d still be in the Wayback Machine and any host of other caching sites.

TD;DR is, if you post on a public forum it’s a matter of public record. If you don’t someone to read what you write, don’t post it. As you shit the bed so you lay in it, or something.

(* – by “nobby,” I’m not referring to the requests themselves but rather the manner in which they’re requested. I can’t think of any which didn’t either contain “or else” in the initial request or in the follow-up when being told no. Third parties are especially good at this, we routinely get threatening takedown orders from Soo, Grabbitt and Runn Solicitors demanding that we remove some link or comment or other from five years ago.)

Ta. Just plundering your knowledge as looks like I’m going to have to get up to speed pretty quickly! Thought it applied to any personally identifiable data and consent could be withdrawn. But that may be an initial view based on internal governance positioning to get people to take it seriously.

It’s not immediately “personally identifiable” though, is it (unless people have voluntarily divulged that information in their posts). All we have is an email address and a username. Ok, if you’re a subscriber then we’d have payment / delivery details too but that’s not publicly disclosed information.

Even if you have a username of JohnSmith, there’s plenty of other John Smiths in the world. Ok, some people may have unique names but it’d be a fringe case.

Also,

When you sign up to the site you agree to a number of things, one of which is that the content you post is jointly yours and STW’s (as the publisher). It’s referred to as a universal non-exclusive right. What this means for STW is that they (via us) can protect the historical integrity of the forum. If users were allowed to request that their posts be deleted whenever they felt like it, the forum would be unreadable pretty quickly.

We can remove some content in exceptional circumstances, but they have to be just that, exceptional (eg, it puts the poster at a real risk of harm). Simply going “I was a nob and now regret it” isn’t sufficient – tough, learn from your mistakes, take some responsibility for your actions and stop being a nob.

the forum would be unreadable pretty quickly.

Whereas ? 😉

I need that lady ironing picture here …

Please tell me you deleted Lanesra ? Vile individual.

Strangely enough http://singletrackworld.com/forum/profile/lanesra – I don’t think I’m mis-spelling it.

Edit: no, definitely the right spelling, if you go via Google the posts are there, but the user doesn’t exist (and has a “blocked” tag). Not sure how that fits in with what Cougar is saying.

Looks like he left of his own volition. It’s not a banned account but his last post was in 2010 (six months after I joined and three months before I was offered the moderator gig, so kinda before my time).

I’ve just read through a deleted six-page epic thread where he was going to sue TJ for libel. The forum was a lot more… angry seven years ago wasn’t it.

(and has a “blocked” tag)

Ah, good spot, I’d forgotten about this. Blocked is… something else, I’ve tripped over it before but it’s rare. I think it’s what happens when a user gets banned by Tech rather than the moderators, but don’t quote me on that. Ignore this, I’ve just found the email conversation and my half-remembered explanation is for a different status.

I’m guessing then that it’s the product of some legacy code that predates our current system. (The banning mechanism is called “Ban Plus” which perhaps implies that at some point before my time there was something akin to “Ban Standard.”)

Either that or it’s the product of some legacy code that predates our current system.

I’d assumed the same code as 2009 was still being used.

(The banning mechanism is called “Ban Plus” which perhaps implies that at some point before my time there was something akin to “Ban Standard.”)

Ban Boost really brings the bannings alive, though.

Please tell me you deleted Lanesra ? Vile individual.

Funny, I’d completely forgotten Lanesra, maybe the effect extended beyond STW into meatspace!
Creepy… 😯

What is the deal with the names list in the search? Just a broken bit of forum? It’s pretty useful though- caused me to learn how to search a site in google which is actually really handy for other stuff. Our work website’s terrible, googling it’s way more effective than using its own search

Cougar – Moderator

folk will be having one-sided conversations

Can’t have that.

I’d assumed the same code as 2009 was still being used.

A quote from one of the longer-standing moderators (which is, erm, all of them) stated “the moderation tools have changed over time” so there’s every chance I’m right.

What is the deal with the names list in the search? Just a broken bit of forum?

Yeah, and has been for ages. If I were to guess I’d hazard that the combo box can’t handle the sheer volume of items.

caused me to learn how to search a site in google

I use this, it’s invaluable:
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/search-the-current-site/jliolpcnkmolaaecncdfeofombdekjcp?hl=en

(You can do the same thing by adding site:singletrackworld.com into a search, but this is a lot more convenient.)

Lanesra

How do I not remember this person? I’m pretty sure I’ve been on STW since before 2005, and while I only really began posting in quantity (and quality!) after the Great Hack, I have no recollection of him.

Anyway, I found the person I was wondering about. He used to post more on the regular forum, but seems to stick to the classifieds now.

been on STW since before 2005

Pah… Newbie 😀

Quite – I have a topic I started on this page: https://web.archive.org/web/20021009222806/http://www.singletrackworld.com:80/forum/list.php?f=2&menu=14 (under a former username)