It appears Facebook is undergoing similar upheaval about making all user content permanently the possession of Facebook Inc. or whatever corporation that buys them out. They look like they will revert to allowing user created content to be the propety of users who can delete their accounts anytime.

Obviously a site like this is damaged if a user could delete all of the content, but I think VideoSift should adopt a similar policy allowing for users to delete their account. I think all the submitted videos should transfer to Siftbot or some other account and the Channel be put up for adoption. But the comments and blog posts should be allowed to be deleted.

This will allow users to leave gracefully without resorting to vandalism. It's not clear what to do with banned accounts, but I think a banned user who expresses a desire to just delete their account should be allowed.

Also of interest is the move toward a sift-like community discussion/voting on policy changes like has always been encouraged here.

Anyways, I was kind of disturbed when the unilateral decision was made to make comments undeletable and if you tried to discard your videos or otherwise close your account it is no longer allowed.

I think it can technically be done with the submission ownership (it might be too much work). I guess deleting comments is a sticking point and it looks silly to change the name on the comments. I don't know if I care that much other then it messed up some older threads. In addition any quoted comments will always link to the username.

In summary I don't really care other then I think users should have control over their accounts and content, but it does affect some people who naively use the same username all over the internet and then have remorse like karaidl.