Ask HN: Help I want out I want to leave HN

3 points by ronilan 6 years ago | 9 comments

Hi everyone.

I’ve been a member of this community for a decade plus.

I’ve used two accounts: TotlolRon and ronilan.

I recently figured this community is not good for me and I want to leave.

I tried to delete all my content (comments and posts) as one can do in other communities (i.e. reddit, Twitter), but I can’t. There is no technical way for me to do it and the moderators are refusing to help.

If anyone reading this is willing and or able to help make this happen - I’d be thankful.

Thanks, Ron

sigmaprimus 6 years ago |

It looks like you haven't comented on your one account since 2010 and the other for 43 days, submissions even longer(besides this one), is it possible what you need is a dns blocker to prevent you from reading the content?

Maybe your router has a white black list that would do this?

sigmaprimus 6 years ago |

Heres a comment from a previous thread that covers this topic.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19459658

dang:

We delete comments for people nearly every day. It's true that we don't allow wholesale deletion of account histories, because that would gut the threads the account had participated in. But we also don't want anyone to get in trouble from anything they posted to HN.

The idea is to balance the need to preserve history (community interest) and the need to protect users (individual interest). We don't get there perfectly, but I can tell you for sure that the vast majority of people who ask us about this end up happy with how we help them.

dang 6 years ago | |

(I just noticed this thread.)

That's correct. HN generally doesn't remove entire account histories, because that would gut the threads the account had participated in, which is unfair to the commenters who replied. Our goal is to balance community needs with individual needs. pg wrote about this many years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6813226. That doesn't mean we don't care about individual requests. We take care of them every day. For example, we can randomize usernames and disable accounts, and we also frequently delete or redact specific posts that people are worried about.

rvz 6 years ago |

> I recently figured this community is not good for me and I want to leave.

Where you think you're going?

Once you create an account on HN, it is there forever.

All your posts stays right here and there is no way you can delete anything on HN after it is created. It is unfortunate but that's that.

dang 6 years ago | |

We frequently delete or redact posts that users are worried about, and have other tricks to help out as well. The only thing we don't do is delete entire account histories wholesale, because that would not be fair to the other users who participated in the same threads.

ronilan 6 years ago | |

There is obviously a way. It’s not unfortunate. It’s a deliberate choice.

כשאנשים קטנים מטילים צל ארוך זה סימן שהשמש שוקעת

tartoran 6 years ago |

Generate a random password and change your hn password without saving it anywhere. Remove your email address as well. Now you’re locked out.

However, not sure what stops you from simply not using HN. If it is addiction then you’ll probably get addicted to something else..

numpad0 6 years ago |

What's the problem if you just log out and forget about it? Are you being stalked or fear you might be?

earpwald 6 years ago |

Out of curiosity, why do you feel its not good?