How can I delete my less wrong account?
Where can I get my less wrong account deleted?
No, the ‘delete account’ function doesn’t work, and I am not posting from the account I want to have deleted as I don’t want the name to stay in the google cache for another couple of months
I already asked that question here; I got no reaction that gets me further but were upvoted enough to post here.
I don’t know how to delete Users (including one’s self), but I know that SQL injection doesn’t work.
Just sent a PM to user matt describing your situation. I believe he works at TrikeApps (the developers of LW). Hope he can help.
Thanks cousin_it—we’re on it.
Thanks!
That thread didn’t contain much additional information, and someone already asked you for more clarification there. What, exactly, is your goal? As in, clarify the word “delete.”
no longer able to log in via that handle and its associated password?
have all current posts/comments pulled from this site?
somehow attempt to get that name out of google cache as fast as possible? (Do you even have control over this?)
As an alternative, what does the “delete account” function do; perhaps contrasting what it does do with what you are unhappy with will help others respond.
You should be prepared for the response that what you want is not possible or that, if it is, no one will take the time to implement whatever is needed for whatever reason.
The “delete account” function simply doesn’t work. When I select “Yes” on all of the three radioboxes, it still gives me a “See? you don’t really want to leave” reply.
My goal is mainly the last thing. I think that the google cache will remove the name after some time; a certain deleted post on less wrong isn’t in the google cache anymore although it was some months ago.
Thanks for the clarification. How many posts were made? jimrandomh’s suggestion below seems plausible if it’s not too many. Just log in as that user, click on your username to show all of your quotes, and then edit them and paste in some text like “user account removed” or whatever you want.
Are there too many posts to do that and/or does that still allow for tracking you here via your name and is that undesirable?
Maybe one more question along those lines: is it purely your name that you don’t want even associated with LW… or is the content of certain posts that you don’t want associated with your name?
If the latter, just edit those sensitive posts and stop using that name and you should be fine. If the former, yes, that’s a bigger problem.
I already did that long ago; there weren’t too many posts. That situation does still allow tracking; google will find an empty userpage.
I wrote that user matt from my real name account.
It is not so that I fundamentally disagree with less wrong; this is just a part of an internet-clean-up which has something to do with me becoming older and realizing that I should not post everything under my clear name no matter how brilliant I consider it to be at the moment I hit the post button; this may or may not have been subconsciously influenced by me reading certain pages on the Internet Archive. I already anonymized my blog, for example, although it will still take months until the clear-name-hit vanishes from the Google index.
Gotcha. Though… if the content is absent now and you don’t fundamentally disagree with Less Wrong, what are you fearing someone might think if they find a blank user page and no content in your posts?
This is probably a dumb question… but you have done a search for your name yourself and verified that it’s unique enough that LW is appearing toward the top of the list on google?
Yes, my full name is unique on the internet. Actually, to find the account, a mere search for pre- and surname in quotation marks does not suffice; the query has to have the format “James_Miller”. Google may or may not change their algorithms; I am sure that e.g. a job recruitment agency will have an appropriate entry in their stalking script.
An empty account leaves a strong impression of “This user came, wrote a stupid comment, got downvoted into oblivion, deleted that comment and never came back” (I didn’t get downvoted during my brief involvement with that account, actually). It is implausible that someone creates an account (on a site like this) just to up- or downvote a comment.
Maybe, but that’s pretty strong wording. I don’t know anyone in my circles, except my brother, who even knows about LW. When I was new, I don’t think I had a clue what “karma” points were nor how “upvoting” and “downvoting” works.
Thus, it actually doesn’t occur to me at all when thinking about possible reactions that someone would automatically (and strongly) think that you came, posted, were rejected, and then ran away in fear.
Even so, again… without the content actually there… I don’t see the strong negative connotation resulting that you fear.
The comment could have been anything.
Lastly, is your name unique in general? Is there anyway to literally tie you to that username and assert, “We are rejecting you as a job candidate because we disapprove of the LW community at large and have high reasons to suspect that you posted something stupid and were downvoted out of oblivion because of an empty user account which resulted from our googling. Have a nice day.”
?
I don’t see that as very likely.
Or they created an account to reserve their name, but never used it. I vaguely recall there being services that will automatically create accounts for you on many sites at once, to prevent other people from using your name. Which means that if you generate publicly-visible evidence that you’ve used one of those services, then having empty accounts will no longer reveal anything. (People would have to notice that you’d done that, of course, but someone would have to be extremely detail-oriented and interested in you specifically to even notice that you had an empty account.)
Short of writing a patch to fix the broken delete account functionality, the closest you can do is delete each comment and post individually. But it would be better not to; if you’ve changed your mind, you can always edit the comments instead to add a note explaining your new position.
I tried to download the less wrong code and look after the bug. I don’t have much experience with Python and practically no with building and running web apps, but I’ll give it a look. I don’t manage to get the thing running properly, though; when I open localhost on the appropriate port, I get a long error dump that google does not find (the line at the end is “: ‘Globals’ object has no attribute ‘sqlprinting’ ”; can anyone give me a suggestion by glancing?) and a nice python shell. Applied for the Google group discussing the LW software.
There’s the door!