Do you let members delete their accounts?

[ZandraJoi]

Why/ why not?
I allow my members to delete their own accounts & posts. Who am I to tell someone they have to stay on my forum? Now, I haven’t had anybody ask me to delete ALL of their posts. Some of the topics have questions & answers & I rather have it say Deleted Member than skip over & the conversation doesn’t make sense anymore.
If someone came to me & asked to be deleted, I would ask if there was a reason to see if there maybe was a member bothering them, they had trouble accessing the forum, etc. If I can fix it, I will do my best if they are willing. Otherwise if they want to leave, I would in no way make them stay.
Here's another take. Would you delete accounts if the member died? Say, a family member logged on to let you know that such & such has passed away. I think it would be morbid to keep a dead person's account. Thoughts?

 

[Cory]

Jcink doesn't even have the option for members to delete their own accounts. If they request that I delete their account I generally try not to, but if they have a good reason like privacy concerns of someone stalking them or something, then I may very well delete their account.

 

[Kyng]

I'm on MyBB, which doesn't have the option to let members delete their own accounts. To be honest, I prefer it that way: in my experience, far too many people ragequit in the heat of the moment, and then regret it afterwards.

Of course, if somebody wants me to delete their account, then I'll honour that request. But I do tell people that they should only do it if they're 100% sure they're done with the community forever, and are never coming back. Thus, I advise against it if the cause is temporary (e.g. lack of time, or inability to get along with a particular member). After all, the time situation could improve, or they might make amends with their enemy (or the enemy could leave the board themselves). In those cases, I'll still let people delete if they really want to - but I will tell them beforehand that it's better just to stop visiting and abandon their account, so they can pick up where they left off if things later improve.

 

[Daniel-cash]

The right thing is to allow member to delete their account. Members are not force to join the form in the this first place.

 

[ClicketyKat]

I don't let members delete their accounts. We offer to rename the account and change their personal information and then scramble their password so they can't return. I've had a couple members who wanted their account deleted because someone disagreed with their theology. It's absolute nonsense.

 

[Shortie]

We have it set in our disclaimer that once you have registered on the forum, that is it and your account cannot be deleted. We will of course offer to remove personal information if you wish to have it removed and we will change anything like avatar, but the account will not be permanently deleted once it has been created. We do this as in the past we have had some issues where people have come onto the forum and caused trouble beyond belief and then deleted their account. We do this to protect ourselves and so that if needed if details did need to be passed onto say the police we can then do that if they have committed a crime.

 

[Ravenfreak]

I allow my members to delete their accounts. I feel that it should be up to them if they wish to keep their account or not. I've been a member on a few forums that don't allow this though, and they just encourage the member to log out of their account, change their password to something they won't remember and just walk away. It's too many steps and I'm not really sure why they don't allow members to delete their accounts. I guess maybe they used to have issues with people deleting accounts, and then months later re-registering and continuing the cycle.