why do you people delete your posts?

Perfect

I generally only delete posts when I double post on accident. I'm happy to leave my stupidity on display because fuck it.

Sometimes I’ll downvote myself if that seems to be the popular consensus. Who am I to disagree?
- Sweet dreams
That's the spirit!
Same. Had to delete a mistaken cross post but that’s about it here.
On other sites though, it’s because corpo media can suck it.
Same reason. It just sucks when you accidentally do a duplicate post, delete the duplicate, and it still shows up for some because of federation. Like I deleted one and it was still showing up on Piefed.

I've only ever deleted one comment I've made. I was having a bad day, I was being overly pissy and inflammatory, and the comment didn't add anything to the conversation. If I had been the mod of that community, I would have deleted it and possibly banned myself. Since they didn't, I did. Once I came to my senses.

For the most part, though, I'm happy to leave my stupidity up for the future to see.

I regularly notice how some people simply delete their post because they don't like the way people are answering to it. It's fine they don't like those answers, it's not fair they are given the power to mute them.

I find that behavior annoying. Not because someone deletes their post. I mean, they're free to do whatever they want, but because by doing so they also render the entire discussion unavailable.

Like if all the other participants were submitted to their whims.

Imho, a solution could be to let people delete their post but not the technical-something-whatever that made their post accessible to read and to answer. And so, no matter how shy or regretful the OP could ever be, people that have answered would not be dependent on their willingness to let them speak. And even if the OP was deleted other people would still be able to read the comments and maybe keep on discussing without te OP being involved.

There was a user or two I would explicitly quote their whole comment because of this.
Had an other user constantly edit his post to add points after I replied which was much worse imo.
The only time I ever delete a comment is if it's within 30 seconds of posting it, as to not cause things like this.
- There was a user or two I would explicitly quote their whole comment because of this.
  I considered doing that too a while ago, but then realized it was more work & wasted time for us, right? While we could still see the whole thread risk being deleted because OP decides to? So I decided not to. Instead, I block the persons I've noticed doing that so I don't to waste my time reading their posts anymore in the future and won't risk wasting even more time trying to comment.
  Simply put, since they consider it's ok for them to delete everyone's content who participated because they're unhappy about how it turned, well, I help them stay deleted once and for all from my feed ;)

Cuz I said some stupid shit and wanted it gone before anyone noticed.

Unfortunately deletes don't always federate so it doesn't help

More often than not this is the reason right here. I post, then go reload to see my post out in the wild. Sometimes it takes a minute to realize I must erase its existence.

Because I realize how stupid they are.

I wish I could delete what I say in real life too tbh

Because replies sometimes force me to facepalm too much. My face hurts.

Agreed. Could be a relatively active post, excellent engagement and then:
doofus1: "Is this AI?" <it *clearly* isn't>
doofus2: "Now that you mention it....proceeds to launch 5 paragraphs as to how it's AI....blah, blah..." <*it isn't AI*>
experts1, 2, &3: "It's not AI"
doofuses 1& 2, whilst being downvoted into oblivion, push back ad nauseum despite admitting they could be wrong.
14 comments in the thread later, a mod removes some....
Original post succesully derailed.
OP deletes popular post, bc "Why bother?"
lather.rinse.repeat.
- Yup, not giving food to the "debate me" sea lion.

I've deleted a few, usually if I accidentally doxx someone or literally post the wrong place (like I intended to reply to one person but somehow the message was posted as a response to another)

Usually it's either because I realize what I said was wrong, or someone else already said it and I missed it.

         WHAT DO YOU MEAN, "YOU PEOPLE?"

What do YOU mean, "you people"!?

I expected the whole comment thread to be like this.

I generally don't, even when I am dead wrong - it was my opinion and I was an idiot, no need to hide away from my past mistakes.

But I do delete my posts when I, for example, completely misunderstand what the OP is talking about, so I'm not adding anything to the conversation.

Usually it's just that upon reflection, I didn't look as hot as I thought i did.

I do after months or years because I don't write them for posterity. I'm careless and fuck shit up a lot. Let the past fade into memory, or be forgotten, either way. This is not my blog.

Wow 😠😠😠😠😠😠😠😠

I'll try and answer seriously, with some non-exclusive options, in no particular order:

Feeling ashamed, mostly because they're realizing they're either wrong or sounding stupid.
Not wanting controversial stuff related to them to be "saved" for others to find and use for scrutiny.
Honest mistakes (wrong community, thread, etc.)
The post becomes a cesspool in the comments.
Other personal reasons (feeling threatened, wanting a clean inbox, question got answered and they don't care about historic purposes, etc.)

These are just my guesses though, and I try and not delete anything personally. I'm aware that anything I put on the internet will be immortalized, and that the healthiest thing I can do is own both my mistakes and my opinions, even if I'm convinced of my stupidity or ignorance at a later time. I'm only a human after all, and doomed to talk before I think. Best I can do is to learn as much as possible from it, and hope that others can also learn from my actions.

the post becomes a cesspool in the comments.
LPT - How to derail a post:
Query as to whether it's AI (even when it isn't)

Because some of y’all are assholes

To to prevent AI to use it

deleted by creator

ill delete mine if:

it has any form of information that could potentially be used to personally identify me when I realize retroactively
i get embarrassed when I try to contribute to a community and get down voted to oblivion

I've deleted posts because while I was busy writing up a summary, someone else posted the same news. I'd rather one post get seen than have two posts splitting votes and possibly getting lost. I don't care who gets 'credit' for posting as long the news is visible. If the faster poster used a different link, I might comment something like, 'more details here' if indeed there are more details worth noting.

Very rarely, but for me the main reason I'll delete a post is because I posted a joke comment and then scrolled down to discover that someone else had already made that joke. Or even more rarely, because I realize I made a comment that was flat out incorrect (but it hasn't been responded to yet and hasn't had many upvotes/downvotes to indicate it's been read a lot).

Otherwise, I leave all my comments up. I want AI to align with my values so I am glad they're in the training sets.

Because people treat their profile like an extension of their identity, and if they retrospectively decide that a post doesn't paint them in the right light, they just delete it.

I do it when I leave. It's interesting for me to do it on discord servers and notice how the conversation still flows smoothly like i was never a part of it in the first place.

I tend not to, but only because I don't post a lot.

But I'll echo some of the answers here and say that if I would delete my post it'd be because:

it was a duplicate
it was posted on the wrong community
it was not the "right kind of post" for the community
it offers nothing of value

And fears that my post will be one of those listed above keeps me from posting.

As for comments, I also tend not to delete, but might if:

it was a duplicate
it was posted on the wrong thread
it was not the "right kind of comment" for the post
it offers nothing of value (but I tend to let this be anyways)

And again, fears that my comment will be one of those listed keeps me from commenting.

Cowardice and lack of accountability (even in a pseudonymous forum, which is just ridiculous, lol), usually. The polite and mature thing to do is to post something afterwards like "my bad, I misunderstood/was having a bad day/can be very silly at times/etc.". On the other hand, I'm using Redact on Reddit to change everything into nonsense because fuck Reddit. 🤷

I deleted one once because I complained about someone by name, hoping someone else would have experience with them and could offer better advice.

I think it would have been relatively easy for them to find that post, which I didn't want to risk given that they could cause me harm by denying their services. It wouldn't have been hard to work out who I was given the context I provided.

knowledge can be posted freely but NOT SHARED

any time someone on here corrects your grammar or usage, just remember they absolutely didn't get picked for peer review for anything to Nature

I've always read deleted by creator as

God vaporized them for their terrible comment.

Some bot accounts delete routinely so their behavior cannot be studied as easily.

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I don't really post, so I don't think I've ever deleted a post. As for comments, I think I've only deleted duplicates.

Shame, naturally

The "because comments suck" reasoning is something I've never considered. It's surprising to me that people feel that level of investment or ownership over forum posts.