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How should the "all communities" profile tab handle deleted profiles on other communities?
I just noticed that on the user profile page, the "All Communities" tab lists all communities where there is a profile, including deleted profiles. If a non-moderator follows a link to a deleted profile it's not a 404; we have a "this user is deleted" page. Most of the time we don't link to deleted users, so it's hard for most people to even encounter that page. But it's there; someone thought ahead.
Well, it was hard for most people to encounter a link to a deleted profile, but then I failed to consider that case when implementing this new tab on the profile. What should we do with deleted profiles on that page?
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Leave it alone; there's no server error here and it's ok to show every community where a profile has existed, even if it doesn't now.
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Exclude deleted profiles; users should be allowed to be forgotten.
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Exclude deleted profiles for most people, but show them (marked as deleted) to (moderators? curators?) in case it helps evaluate cross-community situations, and/or for transparency.
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Something else?
I'm anticipating that someone will suggest 2a: exclude them from the list for self-deletions but not for forced deletions (like spammers). We can't do that today; the software does not distinguish those two cases. Eventually we will have self-serve profile deletion and we could then handle that case differently, but right now deletions are done by mods/admins pushing buttons, which might be in response to support tickets or might be because of the user's behavior.
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Keep it simple
To keep things simple, deleted community users should not show up for anyone on the "All Communities" tab. For global moderators and global admins, separate tools can be made for tracking deleted community users, rather than trying to force the "All Communities" tab to serve an additional purpose.
Separation of private information
In addition to keeping the code for the "All Communities" tab simple, this also avoids moderators and admins having to remember which information is supposed to be kept private. This way a moderator can share a screenshot of the "All Communities" tab without worrying that it might divulge information not intended to be available to users. If the moderator wants to view deleted community users, they have to go to a specific moderator only page, which they therefore have no doubt should never be shared with users.
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Until the system has a way to distinguish between the different reasons for deletion, we should ensure we consider users who have done nothing wrong, and have a strong reason for concealing that they ever (potentially accidentally) had a profile on a community that they have since been deleted from. I imagine that such cases will be rare, but we should accommodate them first, and add conveniences for other cases over time.
Who should see deleted users
Each of the user types in the list below reflects the following reasoning: a deleted community user should show up only to users who have access to view the deleted user page.
On the "All Communities" tab of the user page, visibility of deleted users should be as follows:
- User (including curator): They should see only deleted community users who are the same network user. If my community user on Mathematics Codidact is deleted, it should show up on my own "All Communities" tab, but other users should not be able to see it.
- Community moderator / community admin: These should only be able to see deleted community users on that same community. If my community user on Mathematics Codidact is deleted, it should show to Mathematics moderators and Mathematics admins, but not to Physics moderators or Physics admins.
- Global moderator / global admin: These should be treated the same as being a community level moderator/admin on every community, so all deleted community users should show, regardless of which community.
In all cases, a deleted community user that is visible should be clearly marked as deleted (rather than having to follow the link to find this out).
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