this post was submitted on 11 Nov 2023
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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I really like lemmy and have stopped using reddit months ago. My only real gripe with lemmy is the title: when a conversation gets going in the comment section, that gets killed when the post is deleted, for whatever reason. I can't even go back to a conversation and have a look at the comment threads to "dwell in nostalgia" (or whatever) if the post to the comment section gets deleted. Piecing the threads together from the inbox and my comments on my profile, and continuing a discussion via direct messages is cumbersome and kind of antithetical.

So, feature request, I guess: Enable retrieving comment sections of deleted (removed from community) posts. Bonus points if new comments could be added after the deletion (/removal) of a post.

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[–] [email protected] 49 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Little add-on: The current behavior kind of makes the creator of a post the "owner" of the comment section. If they dislike an ensuing conversation, even if they're not involved in it, they just delete the post - "Fuck you, you're not having that conversation!". I find that problematic from an ethical perspective.

[–] LemmyIsFantastic 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

If they didn't do it the mods and admins will.

Power mods shape conversation here far more than Reddit mods ever did.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

If they didn't do it the mods and admins will.

Yah, I was about to mention that, but left it out to keep the post brief and on point.

Power mods shape conversation here far more than Reddit mods ever did.

I'm not sure of that. My experience feels the other way around.

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

Maybe humans just deserve war after all

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

I find that problematic from an ethical perspective.

You are not entitled to the moderation you want, host your own instance, it's their club.

obligatory

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

It seems you completely missed the point. I made no comment on moderation in any way, shape, or form.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The point is i think it is a moderation decision to do that, you are welcome to host your own instance with a modified version of lemmy.

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

The scenario I laid out clearly doesn't involve mods or admins. Though mods' or admins' intervention has the same effect. As pointed out by at least one mod here in the comments, it is problematic from their perspective too, because nuking entire threads by deleting one comment or post is a technical limitation, not a moderation issue

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

That comic is so full of shit. Anyway, enjoy brown nosing mods forever because the moment stop toeing that line, you're gonezo

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This extends to moderation as well.

If I remove something early on in the chain, it prunes the entire thing. Sometimes there will be rule breaking content, and then a really detailed and well thought out response explaining the issue / debunking the misinformation. I don't want to have to pick between keeping the good content and removing the bad.

It also gets annoying to moderate because I have to work from the tail end of every chain backwards else I'll lose access to comments after the prune point.

One positive, the new version of Lemmy will fix this issue for account deletions. Previously when accounts were deleted, they took out all the chains with them. Now you have the option to not do that.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I didn't consider the moderation angle; likely because I'm not moderating anything around here. Now that you say it, it seems so obvious, and sub par to put it mildly.

[–] TheTetrapod 3 points 1 year ago

I hate that it will still be an option. I miss being able to load deleted comments with Reveddit.

[–] buddhabound 17 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

A decent approach, as a social platform, would be to use the Reddit model. The content is stripped and replaced with [deleted] if deleted by the user, and [removed] if removed by moderation (with the appropriate log in the modlog). This should maintain the overall comment chain.

I think the issue may be federating the update to other instances. I'm not sure how it works now, but if it's treated as an edit, that should work like they currently do.

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

Hopefully, automatic external caching of all content makes any form of deletion by users or mods physically impossible

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Totally agree. It also happens when a comment is removed and the whole tree of replies gets cut off at that point and is no longer viewable. It's definitely technically feasible because admins can still see removed posts/comments and all the replies, so I would imagine it's just a matter of time until the developers can get around to implementing that functionality for normal users.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

they need to just strip the content, not truncate the tree. kbin has similar issues

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago
[–] QuadratureSurfer 1 points 10 months ago

I've been running into this more and more recently and it can be frustrating.

Usually I'm looking for some specific piece of info that I received in response to a comment I made, or something I commented on. However if the post was removed for whatever reason I can only view my comment, but no context.

So it seems like the comment itself is still there, so I'm assuming other comments are still there, just only visible for the users that made them. It would be great if this was changed as OP is requesting.

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

Maybe the option should be removed, because technically you could create your own private Lemmy instance and mirror everything but disable deletion. Now you have all the information available people deleted. You could go even further and create a browser plugin so everyone else could see all deleted posts. You could do the same and create a plugin, to display usernames of everyone who voted on a post, as that information is publicly available. It's just hidden. So there's still a lot of work on Lemmy required to streamline this or it might get never solved.

On another note you could create an instance that only displays deleted content. Now I wonder what that looks like. Scary.

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

You setup an instance where you don't delete any content

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

Yes, censorship is cancer. Why didn't the cancer stay on Reddit.