Former Members Show up as 'Deleted'

[Retread]

Feb 22, 2020 8:45:27 GMT -8 Maude Fealy said:

Until now, a former member's mini profile to the left of their posts still showed that person's screen name even though it was no longer clickable. But now every single former member is showing up as 'Deleted' on both of my forums.

Even though those former members chose to remove themselves, it was nice to know who made which post. And former members sometimes come back. If they do, will their old posts still be attributed to 'Deleted'?

I'm wondering what the reason was behind that change.

Hi Maude Fealy

In previous versions of the ProBoards software, when a member deleted their account, then later a new account was created, using the same username that was used by the deleted account, all those old posts became attached to the new account. This presented a BIG problem. It didn't matter if the person using that old username was the same person or someone completely different. That led to confusion. Sometimes unintentional, but in other cases that was done on purpose by the new member.

The current version does not attach old posts to the new account. However, there's still a problem with quotes of old posts pointing to the username of the new account. For this reason, it's best (in my opinion) to put the usernames of deleted accounts on the Reserved Names list.
Admin Home> Settings> Reserved Names

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As to why the posts on your forum associated with deleted accounts are displaying Deleted as the username, I could guess it might have something to do with member re-indexing, but rather than guess, I'd suggest waiting until Monday for a response from one of the Reds.

Sorry I was unable to be of more help on that.

[Maude Fealy]

Feb 22, 2020 10:59:30 GMT -8 Retread said:

As to why the posts on your forum associated with deleted accounts are displaying Deleted as the username, I could guess it might have something to do with member re-indexing, but rather than guess, I'd suggest waiting until Monday for a response from one of the Reds.

I have two forums and it's happening on both. One is large, the other is very small. I didn't ask for reindexing on either one. Can reindexing happen automatically?

This is intriguing, but it doesn't affect the running of my forums so it can certainly wait until Monday when a Red shows up with, hopefully, an explanation.

[BUCKY]

This has also happened on my forum. I wasn't aware of it until I read this thread, but it is looking just as Maude Fealy has described.

[Former Member]

It has happened on my forum too.

[bigballofyarn]

So, I've discovered something. In most cases, all the deleted accounts on my forum still show their former username. However, in instances where they re-registered, or someone else registered with the same name, all posts made by previous instances of that name now appear as "Deleted."

Further, deleting the most recent instance of an account did not make all the old posts re-display the former username.

[VanWoman84]

This is happening on my forum too.
To clarify, the 'username' 'Deleted' only appears in the thread list. Posts still have the username against them, but have the title Deleted Member under it.
Even though the members were deleted, it looked better to have a name against a thread. One member has reregistered, the other hasn't.
How and when did this happen? It must have been recently, as I am on my forum daily and the threads are amongst the most popular.

[Craig]

This would be something the software is doing, so it is likely to be affecting all forums as all forums run the same software. I doubt it is related to the https change, as someone mentioned, but it obviously down to some update that has been made, and this may be an unintended unforeseen issue from that change. I've alerted one of the team so hopefully they will be able to update us on this issue.

[VS Admin]

This change was made on purpose a couple months ago due to privacy law changes in the USA.

[Ghost77]

Interesting, this has definitely only changed on my forum within the last 48 hours. It is disappointing, as it makes threads with posts from more than one deleted member incredibly difficult to follow. Instead of ‘Deleted’ would it be possible to show their user number? That is something assigned by PB on creation of the account, rather than anything the user chose, so not linked to privacy I wouldn’t think, and would help keep the integrity of threads where deleted members chose to leave their posts intact.

[VanWoman84]

Surely Deleted members no longer have data held by PB? That's the point of deleting, all you held data is deleted too. So why delete a meaningless user name?

[Retread]

Feb 23, 2020 12:00:06 GMT -8 VanWoman84 said:

Surely Deleted members no longer have data held by PB? That's the point of deleting, all you held data is deleted too. So why delete a meaningless user name?

I reckon that's because a username could contain some sensitive information.

If Jane Smith registered with the username janesmith a form of her real name would still be shown on every post she ever made.

[BUCKY]

It kind of makes it look as if every thread associated with "Deleted" has been made by the same member.
That can be very confusing, especially on forums like mine, where there are a lot of photos posted by those members that remain on the forum.

[Maude Fealy]

Thank you VS Admin for clearing that up.

Feb 23, 2020 11:13:45 GMT -8 Ghost77 said:

It is disappointing, as it makes threads with posts from more than one deleted member incredibly difficult to follow. Instead of ‘Deleted’ would it be possible to show their user number? That is something assigned by PB on creation of the account, rather than anything the user chose, so not linked to privacy I wouldn’t think, and would help keep the integrity of threads where deleted members chose to leave their posts intact.

It is indeed a problem, especially for forums that have been running for quite a while. People can remove themselves for a number of reasons, and the older the forum the more likely there will be users who deleted their account. This will lead to confusion as to who posted what, especially on forums like mine, which not only allow, but actually encourage, members to dig up old threads and give them new life.

I like the idea of identifying deleted members by the number that was assigned to them upon registering. Instead of coming up as 'Deleted', a former member could come up as 'User X', or 'Former User X' (X being the number assigned to them upon registering; those numbers are never re-used so my guess would be that they remain in the system somewhere.)

[Michael]

Feb 23, 2020 12:55:50 GMT -8 Retread said:

Feb 23, 2020 12:00:06 GMT -8 VanWoman84 said:

Surely Deleted members no longer have data held by PB? That's the point of deleting, all you held data is deleted too. So why delete a meaningless user name?

I reckon that's because a username could contain some sensitive information.

If Jane Smith registered with the username janesmith a form of her real name would still be shown on every post she ever made.

It's not that, its that usernames are identifiable information, not just that they could be.

[elhombre]

But the person using the name "usertest" who created ,and then deliberately deleted their account us still shown as "usertest" in this thread.

So it doesn't happen immediately, or so it appears?