> Say, if my writing style, or my choice of words, or my tone were associated with a traumatic event in my past, SO's insistence on keeping it up would be explicitly abusive, don't you agree?
No, I'd say your trauma is causing you to make an unreasonable demand. The writing style in a short technical post existing somewhere should not be harmful.
> SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishes is also abusive; it deprives me of control over my thoughts and my words. Is it legal? Yes, 100%. But, is it ethical? No, I don't think so. And for what?
It's supposed to be a collaboration, especially SO, and keeping things intact is important for that.
Just yesterday I found a helpful guide on reddit where half the posts were "." It's pretty clear how a site where the primary purpose is guiding people would do a worse job if it worked that way.
> And for what? For keeping the answer for "how can I simulate a click on a DOM element?" online, as if that problem immediately becomes "unsolveable" when that comment, heck, the whole SO web site goes down. What a pretentious excuse to keep your income stream steady.
If it would affect the income stream, then it's something that makes the site bad for users. You can't argue both sides of that at the same time.
> As a top 0.5% or whatever contributor of SO, believe me, I know what the site is for.
Maybe? I don't think most contributors would be anywhere near as upset about an inability to delete posts.
SO wants text like you gave them, I don't think they want the level of emotional investment in those pieces of text. (They might want emotional investment into the site itself, but that's a different thing.)
> I don't think they want the level of emotional investment in those pieces of text
Of course they don't. They want you to be a free ChatGPT as much as possible. The less human you are, the better for them. That doesn't mean that what they are doing is okay or harmless.
No, I'd say your trauma is causing you to make an unreasonable demand. The writing style in a short technical post existing somewhere should not be harmful.
> SO's or HN's insistence on keeping my content online against my wishes is also abusive; it deprives me of control over my thoughts and my words. Is it legal? Yes, 100%. But, is it ethical? No, I don't think so. And for what?
It's supposed to be a collaboration, especially SO, and keeping things intact is important for that.
Just yesterday I found a helpful guide on reddit where half the posts were "." It's pretty clear how a site where the primary purpose is guiding people would do a worse job if it worked that way.
> And for what? For keeping the answer for "how can I simulate a click on a DOM element?" online, as if that problem immediately becomes "unsolveable" when that comment, heck, the whole SO web site goes down. What a pretentious excuse to keep your income stream steady.
If it would affect the income stream, then it's something that makes the site bad for users. You can't argue both sides of that at the same time.
> As a top 0.5% or whatever contributor of SO, believe me, I know what the site is for.
Maybe? I don't think most contributors would be anywhere near as upset about an inability to delete posts.
SO wants text like you gave them, I don't think they want the level of emotional investment in those pieces of text. (They might want emotional investment into the site itself, but that's a different thing.)