Journal deletion process - additional step for connected communities

[scolaro]

Title
Journal deletion process - additional step for connected communities

Short, concise description of the idea
If a user deletes their personal journal there should be an additional step to suggest to either transfer ownership of the communities connected to that account to someone else or delete them as well.

Full description of the ideaSome

Comments

[lady_angelina]

I actually suggested something like this a few years ago and still think it's a good idea if feasible.

Of course, one big drawback is that, as bridgetester pointed out in my version of the suggestion, communities with good content may be more likely to be deleted, which may not be desirable.

[scolaro]

I didn't list this problem, because a) communities with good content usually have more people dedicated to running it/more people willing to step in to do it if they're asked, and b) failing to address the issue leads only to postponing the problem, not solving it.

In the end even those comms would be run over by spam posts and no one could do anything about it.

But wow, you posted this in 2007 already, and still no change? :-((

[lady_angelina]

Even so, I've seen people delete communities for the sole reason that nobody had posted to them in over a year (even though there were hundreds of entries with excellent content existing in them); I luckily was able to contact one of the maintainers of said communities and convinced them to undelete it for prosperity's sake. And then there are those who get fed up with dealing with spam and abuse going on in the community, even though it may be active, so instead of letting someone else deal with it, they summarily delete it. =P And these are maintainers who aren't even planning to delete their own personal journals. I'd imagine that those who are planning to delete might strongly consider deleting the communities they maintain, too, to make a clean flounce break from LiveJournal. As though the option to automatically delete comments and entries outside your own journal weren't enough...Yeah, that's true. I think this should be geared towards finding someone else to take over, although some folks might think that's more trouble

[scolaro]

I think this should be geared towards finding someone else to take over...

Agreed, very much so. Maybe there could be an option that would make another maintainer or user owner with a mouse click, just so the comm is "saved". Not sure, though, how this would play out rule-wise.

Yeah. :< By far, "No status" seems to be the most common "status" of all the suggestions posted, even the ones dating as far back as 2001.

I'm getting the feeling that suggestions merely exists to have a place to point people to, and isn't actually watched by the ones in charge of changes...

[ursamajor]

I would support an option that would encourage transferring community ownership - link to the appropriate page to manually transfer ownership. If the owner chooses either to delete their personal journal while leaving the community intact, or to delete the community, other community admins/moderators should be informed.

As a general rule, IMO, community deletion should be a last resort, discouraged, and triple-checked. [Though if a community has only ever been posted to by one person, and that person is the only one who has posting rights, where it's clearly a situation of "This community is the journal for my fic/icons, because it's easier to post to a community than to switch journal logins" rather than a true community such as davis_square, I'm more in favor of owner-control to the extent possible re "community" deletion.]

[scolaro]

As a general rule, IMO, community deletion should be a last resort, discouraged, and triple-checked.

Yes, I'm very much for that as well!

+1

[silverflight8]

Yes, good idea.

[mlady_rebecca]

Encouraging transfer of ownership, while giving the option to delete the community, sounds like the best way of approaching it.

[ciaan]

This sounds like a good suggestion, to make an easy way to transfer ownership of a comm when you delete your journal, though I would want to discourage comm deletion.