#1: Fran (rmm) on Jan 9, 2010

Could there be a way for the authors to delete comments from their puzzles?

Why would that be good?

Mostly for if people start going off topic and having little fights then the author can delete them if it offends the author.

Hmmm... Mostly I think allowing the "thread owner" to delete comments from a discussion thread only makes sense when the discussion is distinctly about the "owner" as in, for example, a blog. I see a puzzle discussion as something that belongs more to the solvers of the puzzle collectively than as something that belongs to the creator of the puzzle. So I don't really see why the sensibilities of the author should rule.

I can certainly sympathize with the desire to delete some comments. But that hardly ever works. When you delete something, about half the time the person whose comment was deleted just goes and posts it in another thread, or starts another thread to discuss it. Instead of getting rid of the comment, it just starts being duplicated in other, even less appropriate places.

There are situations where censorship makes sense, but the cases are fairly narrow and need to be carefully handled. One case that I can think of is if someone (or some bot) started posting straight spam. Another case might be if someone posted some specific personal information about another user that they preferred to keep private. But such cases would be better handled by the sysadmin than by puzzle authors.

Goto next topic

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