Category: Zone BBS Suggestions and Feedback
I think there should be an option to delete your own account...Facebook and MySpace give you that option. Why not The Zone?
no.
for 1 thing, i think if you really were not interested in the site anymore, you could just not log in. for another, each of us users have special id numbers which would just be utterly changed if 1 user removed there acount. oh and thirdly, myspace and facebook use slightly diffrent code, i think?. at least they don't have the id numbers
wait, i've just thought of something else.
let's say that a user signs up, and picks a username for example... just for this case, we'll say london. now, london is being abused by the zone comunity for what ever reason. what is to stop this user from removing the acount, and then creating a new acount with the same email address and everything, just to pretend that it's actually someone else.
i think that might have something to do with disabling acounts. as i mentioned in my above post, we all have id numbers. so in sted of saying... oh, this user's been naughty.. let's remove his acount, they ban it in sted. firstly to keep the User ids in order, and secondly to save the user from using the exact same information again.
i also read ages ago about time limits on acounts. this is a bad idea as well, because not only does it come back to the id numbers, but let's say someone signed up in 2004, used the website for ages, and then went to study and couldn't come on. now in 2010, they go to use it again, log in and find it's removed. that's why i wouldn't want that either.
Actually, I thought Facebook had where you can't use the same email address once you cancled your account. That or I could be wrong and it might be another site that does that. The Zone could have something like that so that a person can't delete their account and sign up with the same address, or they can put a limmit on how many times you can use that address in case you do cancel your account and want to re-sign up with the Zone again.
here's my argument though, if people really didon't (or were to busy to us the zone) they could just update there acount to show nothing, turn on vacation mode, and then when they are ready to come back it's all still there for them.
This subject has been brought up many times before. As others have said, this probably wouldn't be a good idea as it would screw up the user ID system. Also, it could cause a lot of drama on the zone and we have enough of that already!
While i'm against completely deleting your account, perhaps we could have a system where it is possible to close your account. There could be a link under account settings called "click here to close your account". If you close your account, it will hide your profile and replace it with the message "this account has been closed". Also, your title on the boards would say "account closed". This is rather like what it does when your account is disabled, except in this case, you have the ability to re-open your account. If you are a premium member when you close your account, you could also put up a short reason as to why you are closing your account. This reason would be displayed in your profile until your premium membership expires.
Once you close your account, you would not be able to re-open it for at least 7 days. To re-open your account, once the 7 days are up, you can simply log in again and your account settings, profile information, etc will be restored to exactly how it was before you closed your account, provided you re-open your account within 60 days of closing it. If you wait at least 60 days before deciding to re-open your account, the following will happen:
All your profile information, including your audio profile (if you have one), will be deleted
Your account settings will be restored to the defaults and things like custom login/out messages would be deleted
All private mail messages and voicemail messages would be deleted
Your points would be reset to 0
You would need to re-verify your email address.
Information such as board posts would not be deleted when you close your account. I believe facebook does a similar thing to this.
What are your thoughts?
i really don't think we need this.
as i said before, turn on vacation mode, remove all your info if you wish, and hey presto, acount still open, and no persinal information showing. i really can't see any reason why someone would want to close an acount, only thing i can think of is for drama purposes.
maybe it would be nice to have the message in your acount as to why you are not logging in, so that people know what's going on. seen people not log in for ages, others start to worry where they are, and no explanation to where they went. that would be a nice feature to have.
I agree with the above poster, there should just be a vacation mode.
As for poster six, I was with you all the way up until the sixty days thing. Now that is just unreasonable! All their voice-mail, points, and profile info gone? No way! That is just too much.
I agree with the last poster, bu let me remind you. THIS! ISN'T! FACEBOOK! If you want it to be like facebook then just use facebook! While some ideas are great, everyone wants the zone to be like facebook. Get a facebook account for that!
These ID numbers piss me off...they seem to be the only real reason we can't have the option to delete our own accounts.
sometimes those ID numbers are a lot easier to type in if you're looking for a certain user. do you want to have to type a really long name to just lookup someone or do something relating to another user? much faster to just enter a 4 digit number at the most and it's set.
i agree with rat. i like the id numbers, not just to look up long usernames, but also because of point transfer. also when you think about, you can use your id number to log in the site. i also think it's nicely organized like that, you can look an id and say, ah yeah, so that person's been here for so many years. new members could even look them up to find the right people to anser questions they may have. if we didon't have id numbers (a lot of sites do have id numbers) then what would you have in sted?.
and i'll say this again.
don't log in!. is it really that hard?. you may not want the acount now in a few years, though you may want to come back and you'd really want to start from scratch?. 0 points, no board posts, no one knows you... well what ever works best for you i guess. lol
I agree with posts 11 and 12. I use my ID number to login to the site and when i want to check my profile. Also, don't forget that the ID numbering system is used to log in to zbp. Though the mystery continues surrounding user 15; not quite sure what happened to that user.
The only advantage of deleting audio profiles and the like after a certain period of inactivity and when the user has indicated that they wish to close the account would be to save disk space. I do feel that this period should be longer than sixty days, maybe a year. Other than saving some disk space, which is quite cheap these days, their really is no reason to implement any type of policy such as this.
robbie, i've always wondered about user 15 too. hmmm
I agree with the general opinion of this topic. I don't think you should be able to permanently delete your account, however, I do agree with "the professional", in that you should be able to close it temperarily, although I don't think so much about the 60 day thing. I just like this idea because then we won't be asking question like: What happened to user 15? At least, if the person clicks on "close account", we all know they have chosen not to be a part of the zone for an extended period of time for whatever reason.
Also, for the users who have passed away, there should be some sort of closing of account. Not completely, like....you should still be able to view their profile and everything, but...you can still send a private message and points to the users who have passed away! It's just....I don't know. To me, that shouldn't be able to happen.
hmmm.
i think when it comes to sending private messages to users that have past away, it is out of respect. the acount is left how the user would have intended to leave it, or at least that's my thought. while i do agree that sending message and points are pointless (see what i did?) i accept what i think the staff are trying to do.
Well, I understand right after when it's sort of a memorial thing, but....years down the road? Well, I don't know. I guess some people would appreciate that, but points? hmm...
The only reason why I thought of the 60 day thing was so that it would free up some disk space, but forget that one anyways!
Regarding people that have passed away: I'm not sure how well this would work, but perhaps a short term solution would be to put a message in the about me section telling people that the user has passed away and give a date and cause of death (if known) plus a link to a board topic (if one exists).
Yeah. That, I totally agree with. I mean, I'm glad they don't disable their account, because then it would look like they were banned, but there should at least be something special in their profile...
How would you know the person in fact died? I mean, many of us on here have no connection to a zone member in real life. Same with Facebook / Yahoo / whatever.
Death / passing away is something that as an industry social networking will have to address. There was a recent story about a father trying to get his son's Yahoo content after he had been killed in Iraq: Said content contained letters to and from home and such.
It may be possible to will your online content to someone I guess.
I know in 2009, there were 3 or 4 deaths that I remember seeing topics about on the boards such as Bill AKA BB and LindseyB. Basically, if the member is more active and has more friends on the website, then someone will have a connection with the user and eventually the message will get back to the site, especially if the user in question is on multiple sites and networks. Keeping track of users who are not well known or less active on the site could prove more difficult, though. But yes, I agree that just disabling a user's account is not a particularly good idea, unless there is a way of changing or adding to the "this account has been disabled" message explaining that the user has passed away and not been banned for breaching the TOS.