[mgiampapa]

This explains some trends where posts are being edited on Reddit with nonsense then deleted. Personally, I think this kind of behavior makes the web poorer as a knowledge base. Yes you have a right to do it with your own content, but doing it at scale makes the internet a less useful tool and it makes me a bit sad since the scrapers will already have the data anyway.

[dotnet00]

Those are mostly in response to reddit's API changes. By editing the comments before deletion, the archives also get wiped and it takes a bit more effort for reddit to restore deleted comments behind users' backs.

Yes, it makes the web poorer as a knowledge base, but it's in response to companies like reddit ruining the internet by baiting in users, changing the agreement and then trying to keep the content that was written under the previous agreements.

[Brian_K_White]

Hopefully it just makes sites remove the ability to edit or delete things once they've been published. Especially forums where things have been referenced by other things.

As much as I routinely fine-tune and fix up a comment after initially writing, I will happily go back to the old days before such ability became common, in trade for the sanity of references that don't disappear or change meaning after the fact. The typos don't hurt as much as the swiss cheese and schitzo conversations.

[CaptainFever]

A good compromise in the meantime would be the Internet Archive. A lot of useful data is preserved there.

This made me curious about archivist ethics: https://www2.archivists.org/statements/saa-core-values-state...

> Privacy: Archivists recognize that privacy is an inherent fundamental right and sanctioned by law. They establish procedures and policies to protect the interests of the donors, individuals, groups, and organizations whose public and private lives and activities are documented in archival holdings. As appropriate and mandated by law, archivists place access restrictions on collections to ensure that privacy and confidentiality are maintained, particularly for individuals and groups who have had no voice or role in collections’ creation, retention, or public use. Archivists should maintain transparency when placing these restrictions, documenting why and for how long they will be enacted. Archivists promote the respectful use of culturally sensitive materials in their care by encouraging researchers to consult with those represented by records, recognizing that privacy has both legal and cultural dimensions. Archivists respect all users’ rights to privacy by maintaining the confidentiality of their research and protecting any personal information collected about the users in accordance with their institutions’ policies.

[superq]

Personally I think we need the ability to delete more, not less.

Yes, I do see the irony of writing that here. :'(

[arp242]

The problem with the wholesale deletion of comments is that it also affects other people. For example if we have a back-and-forth constructive conversation here and one of us deletes all comments, then the value of the other person's comments are diminished, and sometimes even incomprehensible.

It's pretty clear you're putting something in the public when you're commenting on HN; this isn't a surprise and nothing is done surreptitiously. If you contribute to a debate in some TV discussion programme then you can't have that deleted later either.

And there are options without wholesale deletion: specific comments can be deleted or edited for specific reasons, and your account can be "soft-deleted" by changing your username to something random.

If you want to have more ephemeral temporary conversations then that's fair! But HN is not the right platform for that, IMHO.