Kind of wish deleting posts wasn't a thing. Would rather just the user-association was removed or something. Just because OP doesn't want to be involved in the thread anymore, doesn't mean everyone else feels the same.

OP has the opportunity to do the funniest thing.

Recently, someone asked about advice on a PC build, collected a lot of useful feedback then deleted their post once they had what they needed. Now all that work other users put in is inaccessible, and all that valuable knowledge can't help anyone else. I think that's a problem.

I happens quite a lot in my experience, and it’s more than an annoyance to me, but I wouldn’t call it a fundamental problem. It does really bother me, especially when the discussion has just started getting good.

I don’t really mind if people delete their own individual comments, but deleting the whole thread while folks are interacting bugs the shit out of me.

As a mod on this community, I find it annoying at best. It happens from time to time, and while there are no explicit rules against it I find it disruptive enough to the spirit of the community to serve users with a one week ban because of it. Deleting an ancient post is one thing. Deleting for no apparent reason while people are typing responses is a waste of everybody's time.

It's happened several times to me. If it were possible, it would be nice if self-deletes were to continue being accessible and commentable. (Moderator deletes being different because of festering non-fruitful discussions)

I think a post runs through that user's own instance, unfortunately, so it would be technically non-trivial.

Yes sometimes controversial posts get removed and I find it annoying

Annoyance at worst. Most times don’t care

Annoyance. However it's usually a mod coming in and either locking or deleting a post (either due to the post itself breaking a community rule or because the comment section got too rowdy to effectively moderate) that causes the abrupt end to a conversation.

Haven't run into too many folks deleting their posts.

Nice try, OP. You're not drawing me into this topic just to delete your post later.

It’s a habit that I think sparked from Reddit exodus and people wanting to remove traces of themselves.

I know some people disagree, but it feels like walking into someone’s library and just setting books on fire. You’re destroying some posterity and the goal of place like Lenny where we want to gather people and information.

Instead of going scorched Earth, we should treat this as a public place where what you say is out of your control once you have said it. We should be practicing mindfulness in how we use the internet, like we used to back in the day.

The common practice on Reddit used to be creating throwaway accounts (some still do that here) to ask those more personal questions, but I think more and more people are just destroying accounts all together every few months.

It’s a less of an issue on the communities where people are asking for personal advice that is very bespoke to the person (even though that advice could in theory help others in the future) and more of an issue in the communities where knowledge is being shared.

I think the larger hurdle on Lemmy will be the fact that there will always be many clashing ideologies and people will never agree on the way people should be living their lives.

https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/5525

I've had second thoughts about posts I've made in the past (usually because they proved to be unpopular with the majority), and have deleted my post. Why sit there and rack up downvotes for no reason? Now if a post I've made was unpopular, but it generated fair and good-faith discussion, I'll keep it up.

Annoyance.

In my experience that's more commonly due to overzealous mods deleting or locking posts than it is to OPs deleting posts.

It does seem like a fundamental problem with Reddit-style comment sections, which is why I usually prefer communities that rely on voting instead of heavy-handed moderation.

It is an annoyance.

just annoyance

I go back to the BBS days on my 300 baud modem... there's never been a fruitful discussion on the Internet. We're all just here to waste time. (e: even those who put forth good-faith effort)

mostly on reddits, useful discussion that is not controversial, is cutshort because the mods dont like the attention the sub is getting, or the post.