Allowing your members to delete their posts

Do you allow your members on your forum to delete their own posts?
I have always set this permission to "no" on all my forums because its best to not allow them to delete their own posts becasuse it can be abused. I have them contact staff or report it if they would like to have one of their threads or posts deleted.

 

I think it is fine to enable the ability for members to delete their own post if certain circumstances are met.

1) Must delete within specified time limit
2) Must be The last post (can't delete when others have posted around it)

Though there is the possibility that someone could post a message and then someone else be in the middle of writing a response while they go back and delete it. That would cause for a waist of time on the responder.

 

I agree with those 2 points but not all forum software have those features.

 

I don't think any forum software has #2...

I don't let members delete posts, but they can edit them. If anything gets abused, I have my backups

 

Yea I am pretty sure too, and I do let members edit their posts.

 

In order to "preserve" my forum as some might say, I don't allow members to delete their posts in certain areas (suggestions) and allow them to in others (forum games).

 

I never allow this because I seen a member with 3k posts on another forum delete all of their posts. It destroyed the integrity of the forum. The forum died off in a week after that.

 

Yea it can be abused, as if a member is not happy about something and decided to go a rampage deleting their posts/threads it can hurt your forum and it's stats.

 

The members group was set to "No" by default. I never fixed it. I suppose it wouldnt hurt anything to allow them to delete their own posts.

 

I never allow members to hard delete their posts, they however can soft delete their posts, so should the accidentally delete their post by accident, it can easily be restored

 

Thats a good thing to do, as you know we have that feature here too, but I rather still not let them delete posts.

 

I never allow members to delete their posts, its not the safe thing to do giving them that permission.

 

Neither can be editing if you say that, but it's all about the responsibility of how much you trust your members to use such permissions responsibly or not, etc.

 

Well yea I agree, but editing is not as bad as deleting posts.. deleting posts can cause more damage.

 

editing out the whole post is just as damaging as deleting it, it just is slightly easier to retrieve it. But...either way, allowing members to soft delete posts is probably the best way to go

 

I don't allow members to delete their own posts,they can just edit it if they want...They can contact me if they want to delete some post and if I think that is ok

 

Yea if a member wants something deleted I have them report it or contact a staff member, and if it's a valid reason then I will.