Nevermind: Technical Forum Changes: Nothing Has Changed

[Dawn Rhymer]

Yes, please don't!

I agree. I had to work through how I felt about the sudden power of "delete" I ignorantly thought I had. On one hand, it gave me freedom to erase things I might later regret writing. Perhaps I could be more bold in my writing, knowing I could later delete my posts. On the other hand, my writing could become rash, deceiving myself thinking potentially I had no consequences for what I wrote. Maybe I would hurt someone at the present in haste, but it could be erased so future generations of AOers would not know about it.

I settled on being grateful we cannot delete our posts. It provides boundaries causing us to reflect and think carefully about what we want to write. Granted, we can go back and erase the words...I have been guilty of editing posts, though mostly to add detail, clarify, and fix grammar. Only once have I deleted something at the end of the post. I couldn't sleep thinking about it, so I got up, turned the computer on, deleted it, and put it in a draft to think more about it.

I never thought about the implications of removing a post from the middle of a thread.