solved How to leave? (How to delete, or how to remove, own account?)

A previous answer by @paul to the same question gave us the the following reply:

See:

"ACP=>Profiles=>Profile=>Profile Options=>Allow Profile Deletion

This will allow users to delete themselves from a site. Their profile, user account and all their content will be gone."

However, on my site, with Profile Deletion enabled in the ACP, I cannot see any button or link for doing this when I sign in as an ordinary member.

All I can see is a button for the option "Create new profile", as I am allowing members to create more than one profile. Is there something else I need to do to make it possible for members to leave of the own volition?

ps In the title to this post, I have added the same question (how to leave?) in different ways to assist future discovery of the thread. The question is very basic for managing a social network. Would it help to have tags for support threads so that they can be labelled in different ways to assist discovery?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 11/06/17 04:21:20PM

You can put this smarty function in a profile template if its not there already for you:

It comes from the profile_header.tpl file of all the jamroom made skins and relies on that setting you pointed out:
ACP=>Profiles=>Profile=>Profile Options=>Allow Profile Deletion

The button to delete will be where you put it. On the Elastic2 skin its here:

I think it would be very useful to add an "on Admin approval" option to this.

Of my thousands of members, I have maybe three dozen who have contributed a large amount of vital content to my site- content that would really mess things up if it were to be deleted. That's why I have my site set to not allow users to delete themselves ...I have to delete them and their content. This gives me a chance to 'change ownership' of some of their vital content (for example change their Group to be owned by me instead, so the huge and important Group will not simply disappear with years' worth of threads by other members in it.)
BUT- I know I will inevitably have hundreds of members who become disinterested in the site and wander off- members who might delete their account and content first if allowed to, thus saving me disk space and avoid accumulating deadwood.

I'd like it if i had a simple checkbox setting that let me set my site to ALLOW members to delete themselves- BUT that would require my master admin approval first before the actual deletion of account and content takes place. That would alert me and allow me to check out their profile first to see if they had vital content (and be able to save it if needed), and then give my approval, activating their deletion request. In most cases, I'd find they had not contributed any crucial content, and I could simply approve their deletion.
I imagine there might also be useful instances when a valued member tries to leave, I get the notification for approval, and upon looking into it perhaps they had a dispute with another member that I can then smooth over without losing them altogether.

An 'admin approval' setting governing members deleting their accounts would keep my site tidy, save disc space, while at the same time protect vital content and members from disappearing without my knowledge and possible proaction.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

In your case Strumelia, I just NOT enable this feature and then maybe add a 'Delete Me' link in the user dropdown which takes them to a contact form (built with the CustomForm module) requesting to be deleted.
hth


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

BTW - ACP=>Core=>System Core=>Tools=>User Menu Editor to add the drop-down link.


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Rather than admin approval you could just check your recycle bin and restore any profiles to restore the content you want to keep (change the owner of).


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Ultrajam, that would assume that I knew of their departure. Without notifications of members deleting their profiles, I might not be aware that they left unless I remember to regularly scan the recycle bin (which i normally don't do unless there's an issue).


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Maybe you can use the Activity Log Watcher to be notified when a profile is deleted?

https://www.jamroom.net/the-jamroom-network/networkmarket/99/activity-log-watcher


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Paul Asher - JR Developer and System Import Specialist

Interesting suggestions all. I'll have to think on this.

I guess I just think that since we can have our sites set to:

Allow/not allow members to join and have a setting to require/not require admin approval...
then it makes total sense to me to:
Allow/not allow members to LEAVE while having the same setting to require/not require admin approval...


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

How would you handle their user experience at the point when they click to leave?

"Sorry to hear that you are leaving us. Please wait for Admin approval."

In my opinion if you are going to allow a user to click the trash button they do need to see the expected outcome of their action.

Maybe deleting the account isn't what you want to allow. How about moving to a quota of fully private profiles, but then you would want to tell them that, not that they have deleted their account when they haven't really.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Probably something more like:
"Sorry to hear that you will be leaving us. Site admins have received notification of your request and your account deletion will be approved and activated shortly. Questions? Email site Admin at: ____ "

I would most likely change the wording on the 'delete account' button/link to instead read: "I'd like to delete my account". That way they have an action path they can initiate, and will get a quick response that their request has been sent in, is being looked at and will be acted upon shortly.
Moving them to private quotas won't work for me I feel.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

Then allowing them to delete their account, you get notified so you can restore it from the recycle bin and take back their content would seem to work best for you. Try Paul's suggestion, very easy to do.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Ok, so say there's this typical scenario:
-I get a notification that member "Q" has deleted their account.
-I don't remember Q nor can I recall if they have some important content i don't want to lose.
-In virtually every case, just to be safe, I'll then have to RESTORE their account and content in order to check what's there. And (most of the time) then delete them again?

It's true that's an easy fix to enact. But my biggest issue is that this seems to be a cumbersome clunky process to go through every time a member leaves.
My other concern is that if I restore them to check over their content, some such members will be lurking on the site in order to make sure they've been deleted...and then (because my site is all public) they might see their profile page and their stuff pop up again! (when i have it restored for my viewing). This could cause more of a problem than them waiting a couple of hours to be deleted while knowing what's going on. Yeah I suppose I could send them to a private quota when restoring them from the recycle bin....but that's adding yet more to the process.
It seems that setting things so every member gets deleted, restored, then deleted again is not an ideal or elegant solution.
I should add that I'm not in any crisis here about this. Just trying to think of a neater way to be able to approve account deletions.


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015

In my opinion the biggest issue would be that you are trawling a user's content to see what you don't want deleted after they have deleted (or requested to delete) their content. If ever you have to explain that it won't be an easy fix however you manage it.

If you want to check the content of every account you would have to restore it and look through their content, just like if you had to look through their content before deleting it. It takes a few seconds to restore an account, visit the profile tab and move it to a private quota.

But if you want to make your users wait until you approve their request to delete their account, hey, maybe that works for you. Change the account delete button to a custom module button which adds the delete to the pending queue - just guessing but I doubt it's that difficult to do. Seems weird but not difficult.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Right now I have it set so members cannot delete their accounts at all. I did that when a longtime member who
'owned' several important groups (but had long since not managed them) was about to leave and just happened to mention it to me before deleting their account along with all their content. Because I had the heads up I was able to 'change owner' and save those Groups containing a huge amount of wonderful useful site content contributed by many members over 7 years.

With my current setting, when a member wants to leave, they look for a way out and can find none... so they either contact me and ask me how they can delete their account (and I delete them as per their request) OR they simply wander off and leave their account abandoned... which imho is not ideal either since it accumulates defunct members, though some site owners like showing as high a member count as possible. Sorry, I don't mean to hijack this thread. I'll stop now!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 05/18/17 05:16:46PM

User A asks a question: "how do I ......" and user b, user c, user d all answer it. It shouldn't be user a's right to delete that question.

However User A upload their song to the site, then deletes their profile, what happens to those songs should be dictated by the sites usage policy. (whatever they agreed to when joining the site)

Thanks everyone for the discussion.

I would like to second what Strumelia is saying (for a more obvious button in the profile page), but also think, that in my case, Paul's suggestion will be adequate until something better comes along.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

PJ, yes I think that Paul's suggestion of adding a "Delete Me" link in the profile dropdown menu will be better for my site as well- better than my current setup of simply not allowing self-deletion at all, with members futilely searching for a way to 'leave' and remove their account. It'll also be better than allowing members to go ahead and delete all their content first.
I'll see if I can wrestle with the CustomForm module to get that done on my sites. Thanks everyone!


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...just another satisfied Jamroom customer.
Migrated from Ning to Jamroom June 2015
updated by @strumelia: 05/19/17 05:12:02AM

@michael - I found the smarty function in the tpl code. It is located in a div as below.

Strangely, I see the delete button on my admin profile when logged in as admin, but not on my regular user profile when logged in as a regular user.

There is nothing in the ACP settings to suggest that this should work for some profiles and not for others.

Please advise. Thanks.




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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

I don't think Power users can delete their main profile, only the profiles they have created.

Comment in the code:



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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)
updated by @ultrajam: 05/20/17 08:56:59AM

This explanation fits with what I have set up: a quota for regular members as 'power users' who can create more than one profile.

However, the vast majority have not created more than one profile. So none of them can see a delete profile (aka delete account) button. They cannot delete their primary profile and user account themselves.

The main question here is how to let members quit their account completely, not just how to delete a public profile. What we really need is a range of options (settings) that make the process of deleting own profiles and own user accounts smooth for most potential member categories.

I could redefine the quota of my regular members, taking away the power user function, and shift the few power users who really do have more than one profile into a new quota. But then I would need to make a lot of other changes in documentation etc, where I explain the benefits of membership and the potential uses of multiple profiles.

Michael has raised the issue of the need for clarity about content ownership - it may be necessary in the Terms of Use statement to note that:

(A) the overall site owner, any appointed moderators, and individual account holders all have the right to delete an account, profile, or published content that is no longer wanted, including posts by other members on threads started by the account owner, unless

(B) the site owner wishes to keep content that has mixed authorship and that remains valuable for the site and otehr network members.

In the case of scenario B, the name and details of the original account owner could be removed by Admin changing the user account name, address, and profile details, thus essentially 'nationalizing' what was previously privately owned, with permission of the original account owner. [check - is this technically possible?] .

Scenario B is complicated, but might be a solution in some situations where a member wishes to leave, and does not mind the site owner keeping previously published threads and information on the site.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)
updated by @researchcooperative: 05/21/17 05:08:53AM

Yes, uncheck Allow Profile Deletion and if a user wants to leave but you want to keep their forum/group posts change their name, email address and password.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

A key point implicit in Paul's reply is that the Admin needs to know that it is really the account owner who is requesting that the account be closed. If the Delete me link is only seen after login, in the user's personal dropdown menu, under their username, then their identify is confirmed.

Alternatives are to ask for (i) a direct request (to an Admin email address) to include the username and account email address of the target account, or (ii) a request via the Private notes system (which again requires a login to be used).

Paul's suggestion is most secure, but for members who have forgotten a login password and just want to leave, it may be enough to accept the username and account email address, which are more likely to be known by the owner. Or is this really too insecure?


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

If they have forgotten their password they can get another using Forgot Password:
yoursite.com/user/forgot


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

They can, yes, but my experience is that most people joining the network are completely inactive after joining, and their most likely decision is to do nothing and let the account sit unused. Such people are naturally not keen to go to the bother of re-establishing a password in order to leave.

I'm thinking to implement Paul's idea of a custom 'delete me' form for logged in members, as well as having an email contact option for logged out members.

Eventually I will need to make unilateral decisions to delete members who have not been active for a certain period of time, perhaps at a rate that is roughly equal to the rate of new members joining...

Hmmm... that could be a nice process to automate, from an administrative point of view, for members who have never added any content at all.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

If they are completely inactive after joining, and then forget their password, and then can't be bothered to re-establish their password... Why do you think they will be troubled by not deleting their account easily?

Why not run a split test? Might add some evidence to your musings?


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Thanks... I don't think they will be troubled at all, and that is the paradoxical problem.

I want people to leave if they are not actually interested, but if they are not interested, they won't take the bother to leave.

If I can provide different ways for people to leave, then this will eventually serve as a split test. Split testing is definitely a good idea.


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

Or try running a test with an "I want to leave" contact form for one quota, and no contact form on another (they would use your site contact presumably). Survey the first hundred to leave to determine how you should change your site.


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)

Thanks. Using the forums module I created a simple custom form with the restriction that it can be viewed (and used) by logged in users only.

See ACP>Forms>Simple Custom Forms

After creating the form, I found its URL and then went to

ACP>Core>System Core>Tools>User Menu Editor

and inserted the form URL there.

In the user dropdown menu, the form is identifed as "Close my account", and in the text box explaining how to use the form, I have set out three options for leaving, based on our discussion above:

"Your account can be closed in three ways. Please tell us which option you prefer (O1, O2 or O3).

There is no need to tell us why you wish to leave, but we would be grateful if you do tell us.

Option 1 - Please move my account to a closed account archive where none of the details can be seen except by Admin. (The account can be renewed at any time with a further request to Admin).

Option 2 - [Your site name] can keep all posted content if It is wanted, but please remove all my personal details (username, email address, personal profile details) from the account. (The account will be given a number label and will be managed by [Your site name]).

Option 3 - Please delete all records of my account including all posted messages and attached replies, profile details, and other content. (After deletion, nothing can be recovered)."

I will call this thread solved, but hope that Strumelia's suggestions regarding the existing "delete profile" button can be considered.

The coding would be tricky I presume, but there is probably a whole raft of ways that leaving options could be (a) integrated with how user accounts are set up in quotas, and (b) configured under the labels of "delete profile" and "delete account".

Thanks


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PJ Matthews, Kyoto
Migrated from Ning 2.0. Now at Jamroom 6 beta and using Jamroom Hosting for The Research Cooperative (researchcooperative.org)

Just a little perspective on leaving services:
http://justdeleteme.xyz/


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¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Education, learning resources, TEL, AR/VR/MR, CC licensed content, panoramas, interactive narrative, sectional modules (like jrDocs), lunch at Uni of Bristol. Get in touch if you share my current interests or can suggest better :)