A user recently wished to delete their account on an instance I manage. They had to go through me to delete their user.
That’s not really a reasonable way to do things. I’m not familiar with any other blogging software that doesn’t let you delete your own account. The right to be forgotten is important on the internet and shouldn’t depend on the instance admins.
Plus, while I obviously deleted that user’s account, a less generous admin could refuse to do so. That’s not really resonable.
A simple, clearly marked button with a confirmation before deletion is enough. It would even be clearly distinct considering how the rest of the buttons on the setting page are a grayish blue.
Hey, you’ll want to enable the Allow account deletion option for your instance, by going to Admin dashboard > Settings. That will let everyone self-delete their account.
It’s an option because there might be some environments (like private instances) where admins need to retain user data. But to your points, maybe this option should be enabled by default.
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oh, good to know that’s a thing!
I couldn’t find any documentation about this, only the command line instructions.
I agree it should be on-by-default, and it should also appear in the docs. Personally I’d have a page for users explaining how to do this, mentioning it might be off and that the admin needs to enable it.
Thanks for the input! Can definitely make these changes and add some documentation. Right now, it’s only mentioned in the Config docs – it’s the open_deletion option.
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