[aur-dev] [PATCH] Make deleted comments visible to Trusted Users

[Xyne]

On 2014-07-28 11:10 +0200
Lukas Fleischer wrote:

>I am not sure about that. Users could delete their comment before anyone
>has a chance to report it and subscribers would still have the insult in
>their incoming mail. Then again, you could argue that the abuser could
>just as well have send a private email to everyone...

In that case the email can be forwarded to a TU or to aur-general.


>Let me describe another scenario that happened: A package maintainer did
>not want to update a completely broken AUR package and told the users
>that the package is fine and that he won't do anything. After some
>discussion, one of the upset users filed an orphan request. Thereupon,
>the package maintainer deleted all of his comments, claiming that he
>would never have said something like that. And indeed, it was very hard
>to tell whether the maintainer replied to the comments or not (without
>having a look at the deleted ones). Would a "Report Abuse" button help
>here?

A user could have reported a refusal to fix the broken package, yes. We could have a general "report" button, not just one for reporting verbal abuse against other users.





>Note that I will not change the comments deletion feature before the
>3.4.0 release but I am open for suggestions and discussion. Maybe we can
>reach a consensus that allows us to close FS#14840 [1] and FS#34690 [2].
>
>[1] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/14840
>[2] https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/34690

If comments are delible then they should also be editable as both can disturb the flow on the page. Personally I'm not worried about the flow of comments on the page as it should be limited to packaging issues which in turn should be fixed as soon as there is a solution.

I really think that comments should be both editable and delible. The AUR is not a collection of holy stone tablets to be preserved for all posterity nor should it chronicle the full history of every package. If that was its purpose then we would be crying out for more advanced commenting features (e.g. codeblocks, quotes). If some important data goes missing someone else will repost it.

A report button would work well with editable comments (just store a copy of the actionable edit). Keeping previous versions alongside the current version would probably be more complicated. In either case, at some point we should expunge the old cruft. Persistent trolls will keep making trollish comments and reformed trolls can be ignored.