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Comments on Permanently delete duplicated questions and answers?

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Permanently delete duplicated questions and answers?

+3
−0

I accidentally posted my neighbor's answer to my same question twice. Obviously, it's irksome and wasteful to see the two duplicated answers! How can such duplications be lastingly forever removed?

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+2
−2

I'm pretty sure you can't.

Of course, it would be technically possible for someone with database access to go in and permanently delete a post. But no such feature is exposed in the UI, up to and including users with administrator access.

Deleted posts are also only visible to a subset of users (bugs notwithstanding), so this isn't a big problem in practice.

I have seen some cases where the owner of a post has edited it to delete the actual content, when duplicates were posted, and simply indicate something like "this was a duplicate of <some other post by link>". For situations where the content is truly a duplicate, and especially where the post is long, this is probably the best (or least bad) option; but do note that it still does nothing to change the licensing status of the originally posted content.

Another at least potential issue is that such a permanent deletion feature would go contrary to the fact that the CC BY-SA 4.0 license is irrevocable. (My emphasis below.) At the very least, such deletion would make it more difficult to show that some content was provided under some specific license, as also to some extent discussed elsewhere.

Section 2 - Scope.

a. License grant.
1. Subject to the terms and conditions of this Public License, the Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-sublicensable, non-exclusive, irrevocable license to exercise the Licensed Rights in the Licensed Material to:
A. reproduce and Share the Licensed Material, in whole or in part; and
B. produce, reproduce, and Share Adapted Material.

(When you post to Codidact under that license, "You" includes Codidact as the initial licensee.)

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No admin interface. (4 comments)
Irrevocability (2 comments)
Irrevocability
Peter Taylor‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

An irrevocable license means that the granter can't change their mind about granting it. It doesn't mean that the recipient can't change their mind about needing it. The paragraphs about CC BY-SA are a complete red herring.

celtschk‭ wrote almost 3 years ago

More to the point, irrevocable does not imply that you are required to continue making the licensed work available. It just means that if someone got a copy under that license, he can continue to use it under the license as he pleases. For example, if you write a post under CC-BY-SA, and I copy it to another web site following the license rules, and then you delete your original post, then I'm not required to delete the copy on the other web site.