this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2023

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No Stupid Questions

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Is there a way to show or view replies to deleted comments? (self.nostupidquestions)

submitted 1 year ago by redpen to c/nostupidquestions

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Currently on Lemmy, when a comment is deleted by its creator, all of the replies to that comment become "hidden". If I know who replied, and I go to their profile, I can still see the replies. The count of the number of comments indicated next to the post also includes the "hidden" replies. However, the replies to the deleted comment do not appear in the post. On Reddit, if a comment is deleted by its creator, it remains in the post with comment deleted by creator or something like that, and all of the replies to thatcomment remain visible in the post. Is there a way to do this on Lemmy?

all 19 comments

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[–] RightHandOfIkaros 0 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I think if a comment is deleted, replies should remain hidden. I'd say the current behavior is more beneficial, despite the obvious tradeoff.

While sometimes there can be some helpful information in replies to deleted posts or comments, the vast, vast majority of those kinds of threads are just flamewars and arguing, then new people joining the battle later on and more arguing and flamewars happen. Lemmy doesn't need more of that. If there was some question answered in one of those deleted replies, someone else can just ask that question again as a post, its not the end of the world.

Besides, a thread with a lot of deleted comments is an awful reading experience. If you ever went to Reddit and their main "science" subreddit, you better have all the discussion you can in the first 15 minutes of the post, because after that they just became a [removed] graveyard, regardless of what was said.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The downside of the idea of removing all child comments.

One person can remove an entire chain of comments just be deleting theirs.

[–] RightHandOfIkaros -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

While true, I don't think this would happen as often as you might think.

For example, lets say some nefarious actor starts some comment thread and later decides to delete their comment "to own the Libs" or whatever they say now. That entire threads responses were meaningless. They were argumentation and flamefighting. If the comment information was incorrect, removing it as a deleted comment is more beneficial than leaving it up for others to read and ignore the context.

Lets say someone decides to delete their entire account and comment history. Reading responses are going to be difficult to understand the context. Most of the time these responses are to specific issues or comments, not typically a general answer, as general answers are usually top level comments. In this case, if someone later has the same question, it can be answered again later when that person asks. There may be more updated information between then and the hidden reply that changes the information, and there is no need to retain outdated answers to a question.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Personal view.

If I make a comment, only the mod and myself should be able to remove it.

It should not be up to a user I reply to if my comment should be visible.

[–] redpen 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is what I want. How can I get this?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You want to delete others comments?

Mod your own community or create your own instance.

[–] redpen 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

No, I don't want to delete others comments. I want others' comments to not be deleted when the original commentor deletes the original comment that starts a comment thread.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Ah. Then you are in luck. That's what happens now for me on KBIN and I think it is the case with Lemmy as well.

[–] redpen 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that a setting somewhere? Because that is not how it behaves on my end. Deleting a comment hides all replies.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

Sorry. I have never used lemmy, so I don't know if it is a setting or not.

Can any lemmy users reading this clarify for redpen?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

But why force that deletion instead of letting people choose if something is outdated/irrelevant/confusing? It doesn't cause any harm to leave up the information in case it helps.

If a user doesn't like it, they can just skip threads with deleted comments, or enable that setting themselves (depending on the frontend)

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

While sometimes there can be some helpful information in replies to deleted posts or comments, the vast, vast majority of those kinds of threads are just flamewars and arguing

This really depends on the subreddit/community

Some people like to delete their comments for privacy, because they want to move instances, etc. It doesn't make sense to have that remove entire chains of comments with it. I also don't think people intend for that to happen when deleting comments.

Mods should have a "nuke thread" button to autoremove all child comments when there's a mess like you said. Users shouldn't have that ability, even if they intended for that in the first place

[–] redpen 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

This was the reason for this post. It has happened to me quite a few times already. When I take a bunch of time to make a well-thought-out reply and link a bunch of references in a discussion, I don't want all that effort to effectively disappear when the original commentor just decides they are embarrassed or don't want to continue and just nukes the thread.

Edit: typos

[–] RightHandOfIkaros -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

While I agree that mods should get a sort of mass moderation function, I still believe a user deleted comment hiding replies as beneficial.

If a person deleted their comments for privacy, they obviously are not nefariously trying to destroy a comment thread. Usually. However, if a person chooses to delete their comment for privacy reasons, what about comments that quote your deleted comment? The quote text doesn't get deleted. That's a privacy issue, is it not? Should all replies to a comment be string searched to delete quoted text? That would be a rather expensive API request. But, hiding the replies would help. A person would have to know who replied and go to their profile searching specifically for that quoted text to find it if the replies get hidden upon delete.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I guess if it was a privacy issue, it might be a different conversation. If that is the reason though, I think it's a weird way of solving the issue. Hiding it in the UI doesn't get rid of the content, and might make it harder for the user to find where that content is. If a user had private information in a comment and someone quoted that portion, they could then message the other user or ask the mods to delete it properly.

If a person deleted their comments for privacy, they obviously are not nefariously trying to destroy a comment thread.

That's the problem though isn't it. They don't intend to destroy it but it happens anyways. So now even if someone wants to delete their own comment, there's an incentive to not do that since it would delete everything below it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

It's interesting that all the replies (so far) are to you, rather than OP, because the behaviour of Lemmy is more interesting than just answering 'No' about their original query. So you could nuke everything in this post if your wanted to.

The 'obvious trade-off' part doesn't acknowledge how much of social media engagement is driven by the urge to correct someone. So I think it's something to be mindful of: if you say something wrong, and someone corrects you, then your choices should be: leave it be; strikethrough your text; or edit it to literally say "[removed]", which are all better options than deleting it.

To give an example - from when I commented on an eerie Terrible Real Estate Photo with a oddly-placed chair in it:

The replies to me - that it's an optical illusion, and that the sockets are part of building regs, have value on their own, and shouldn't disappear just because I might get embarrassed by my comment.

[–] Despair 1 points 1 year ago

There are lots of reasons for for wanting to delete comments without wanting to delete any replies.

For example in this comment, I bring up the use of macros as a solution to fix a mouse issue. If someone brought up a point that this software was against the games TOS, I would want my comment removed as fast as possible because I view my comment as potentially harmful (and from context, it would have been obvious what the deleted comment would have contained). If there were other replies giving advice on how to solder (one of the other solutions I give), I would want those replies to remain visible to anyone else viewing the post. Some people, like me, might not have been aware that deleting a comment would remove all other replies, I've never seen a warning message that this would happen when deleting something.

Deleting the comment on mobile instead of editing out bad information is also a lot more likely because it's a "one button fix", and a lot more convenient than trying to edit the post (some apps don't render markdown correctly, and may not display strikethrough text). With the above example, quicky deleting my comment would have been an appropriate way to remove harmful advice, and a reply warning about the use of macros and advice on how to solder would still be helpful without the context of the original comment they were replying to.