How do I have all my posts removed from FlyerTalk?
 

Subject says it all.

Ping?

I'd do it myself, but most of what I want to remove are in threads that were locked at my personal request. ;)

I know there is a nuke-em-all button. . .

The silence is deafening.

but not getting rid of your current account as well?

Now that the elections are behind us, can we address my question?

Thank you.

Maybe they get the week off for the election. ;)

I've been here for eight years and 11,865 posts. I've learned a lot, and hopefully contributed a modicum to the community myself. Yes, I would like to keep the handle as a link to my FlyerTalk friends, though I would expect the post count to rewind to zero.

I have a fundamental outrage at Omni being opened net-wide without discussion, open-jawed amazement that something as basic as the subsequent robot-crawling was not considered upfront, and annoyed that a trivial to implement plain-text robots.txt file was not created to stop those robots while options were considered.

In my job, I would be fired for any one of these three things. Well, unless I was told by my boss to do them.

I've also been around since way before FlyerTalk was founded. I have a keen understanding that anything posted on the net mostly stays on the net forever. If you know how and where to look, you can find my first usenet posts from the early '80s.

But you know, I really bought in to FlyerTalk being a community. While I posted nothing I would be ashamed for my mother to read, I never expected every post to be visible to any Google voyeur.

Sharon had a very personal post ripped off and posted on another bulletin board. True enough, that was a betrayal by another FlyerTalker, but the problem is magnified a thousandfold by the recent changes. It could even more easily have been taken by Google or Yahoo or Digg.

Have you noticed the links at the bottom of every thread? Readers are invited to submit our discussions to Digg, del.icio.us, and StumbleUpon where they will be ranked and viewed and laughed at like YouTube videos. You don't have to be a FlyerTalker to do this.

Post something heartfelt, and you may well find it on the Internet version of the National Enquirer. For that matter, if you posted something heartfelt two years ago, it is now also fair game.

These are fundamental changes.

I trusted FlyerTalk. I feel betrayed by recent actions, though I acknowledge that it was unwise to so trust a site that was outside of my direct control.

I think it only fair to be given the opportunity to re-level the playing field, even if it is also at my expense.

So, Randy. Your minions remain silent. I would have expected them to to at least reply with a comment on the technical capability of the software.

You and I both know it can be done.

Let's do it.

--PM sent to Randy.

Birdstrike, perhaps you are not getting a response because your request has the potential to spark others to do the same thing.

Perhaps, though I don't believe many will do so. I don't know if my initial requests ever got out of the tech group, but if they did I further suspect there was no urgency attached to them, I was then, after all, asking a hypothetical question.

Since the situation continues to drag on, I'm now requesting specific action, and copying Randy directly with the request,

Also requested that the thread be moved to ORP.

I would give the team the benefit of the doubt for a while, but would expect that this issue will get quite a few page views - evidence that we are not comfortable with the recent unannounced changes here.

Hopefully you will get a response, even in private. Let us know if you get an affirmative answer. ^

Face it...given certain recent decisions and the silence in this and in other threads, it is clear to me that the "powers that be" and their employs do not care about (certain concerns of) the membership of this website. Certainly, they may claim otherwise, but in the absence of action, words are just words.

Funny how things went downhill after IBB bought the place, eh?

Go to Google and type this in the search box: site:flyertalk.com "forums > omni" birdstrike

That finds 42 OMNI links. That's not so much. Just delete them yourself.

While I have posted in those threads, Another reason Google brings them up is because my handle is contained in someone's quote of a comment I made.

I'm not sure Google returns pages in which I am not quoted.

And, before someone says, of course quoted comments in someone elses post would not be removed as part of removing the posts that I authored.

That said, I'm not sure what PageRank is doing with FlyerTalk posts. . . Hmmm.

I think this is the appropriate time to make this request once again.

This has always been a public board. You have never had any control over who views what you post here.

It makes no sense why anyone would get their panties in a bunch now that OMNI is open to Google.

Not so much of a Nerd then, eh? :D

It hasn't always been a globally searchable board.

If it makes no sense to you, then you haven't thought about it enough.

I bumped this thread because I had made my thoughts clear in another, related, thread.

I want the IT folks to be contemplating what it would take if the boss is gracious enough to pull the trigger.

It will save me a lot of work and make the board much less messy

Did anyone say it had ever been a globally searchable board?

And I probably won't be thinking about it, much. :p

OMNI is, and always was, a public forum. Post accordingly. :)

No, it was a criteria based forum which is not the same as a public forum by any means.

If I post something in a forum on the internet, and I have no control over who is viewing it, and there is absolutely no way of my knowing who is viewing what I post, then I'd consider it public .

Maybe that was a good consideration. :)

birdstrike, have you received ANY response?

Your question seems to be sitting at the bottom of the queue.
Perhaps you have received other responses by PM?

You are correct but unfortunately people just dont get it.

No response, private nor public.

My request still stands.

According to the tech support of another board, the guaranteed way to remove all posts for a single poster is to delete the poster from the board.

So if birdstrike as a name is *deleted* (not just banned, actually deleted), then all your posts would go away - along with any thread you ever started, thus removing the posts from within that thread as well by everyone else.

That works on a version of php, not sure if it would work on this one.

I know at least one FTer had gone MIA just like that. I don't know if s/he requested to be "erased" or something else happen to this individual.

I was reading another discussion thread this morning and saw a FT handle in a quoted reply. I tried to look up the original post but found no match. When I searched said FT handle, there's not a single FT post associated with such handle. :eek: As far as I know, this person used to be an active FTer. There's no way s/he has zero post on FT.

In a nutshell, yes, FT can delete a poster's account and make her/him disappeared. Not sure it's per posters' requests or executive decisions though.

However, if any fellow FTer ever quoted say FTer's post, the quoted text remain. But the poster is gone.

I don't think that's what birdstrike wants though. ;)

From a technical perspective, it is certainly possible to delete all of a member's posts. From a policy perspective, it is not something we currently do.

From the FAQs:

Who owns my post?

For the sake of simplicity, we'd say that we own anything posted on FlyerTalk. Our reasoning is that we have the power to edit or delete any post if we, representing the community, find it provides more harm than value to FlyerTalk. Also, if a member decides they no longer want to participate in the community, we would find it difficult to go into the database and delete each post an individual had made. Excerpts from posts to FlyerTalk may appear in InsideFlyer magazines, books, or other materials.

Of course, policy decisions are always up for revision, but at this time the short answer to the original question is, we do not remove posts upon a member's request.

I understand this probably isn't the answer you were hoping for birdstrike, but I hope it helps clarify the current policy.

It does. Thank you Mikel. By the same criteria posters may also remove or modify their own posts.

You (FlyerTalk) cannot set a policy, encourage posts, then radically change the underlying assumptions and expect to remain unchallenged and above-the-fray. I'm currently dialoging with Mr. Petersen on this topic and hopefully we will work out something acceptable.

Until then, stand by.

Just report all your own messages as "bad" and let the mods delete them one-by-one. Or just cancel your account and open a new one: "birdstrike2"

There are issues with your "solutions."

1. Mods don't always delete RBPed posts/threads:
Suggesting RBP for the sake of having your posts removed, IMHO, only increase the workload of our volunteer mods. I've done my fair share of RBPs. However, I don't personally recommend it for THIS purpose.

2. Theoretically, per TOS, one individual can only have one FT handle. If your 2nd handle suggestion would have a similar effect to change one's FT handle, all the previous posts will still on FT and the previous posting history will be transferred (or attached) to the "new" handle. To my knowledge, there's at least one FTer had changed her/his FT handle recently and all the post count "credit" from the previous era is now under the new handle.

However, if cancelling one's FT account will automatically delete every post one ever makes on FT, that's another story.

The question then becomes: "would FT admin grant cancellation requests, knowing say FTers with the very intention to start from scratch under a new FT handle?"

Or is there another more "constructive" way to address OP's concern? I don't think OP's getting any "positive" response from the admin (yet).;)

If a user has no intention to come back, does cancelling an account delete all posts?

No, the posts stay.