Issue status update for http://drupal.org/node/19055 Project: Drupal Version: 4.5.2 Component: node.module Category: bug reports Priority: normal Assigned to: Anonymous Reported by: menesis Updated by: nedjo Status: patch There are several different actions that might be wanted in different situations. How about a followup page after user deletion providing options, e.g., User [name] had [number] of posts and [number] of comments. What do you wish to do with this content? Action: [] Leave it in its current status. [] Unpublish it. [] Delete it. Unless you delete the content, it should be assigned to a different user. What do you wish to do? [] Assign it to the admin user. [] Assign it to anonymous user. [] Assign it to a different user ________. nedjo Previous comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 10:23 : menesis Attachment: http://drupal.org/files/issues/node_user_delete.diff (507 bytes) When a user is deleted, all nodes which he created can't be accessed anymore, because they have non-existing uid and queries which select from node and user tables fail. There are two ways to fix that: 1) also delete nodes. 2) reset nodes' author to Anonymous. 1 is most probably undesirable side effect. When I encountered such problem I was happy those nodes were still in database and I could bring them back by changing uid. Otherwise I would have lost the content. Here is a simple patch which implements 2) - sets node.uid to 0 (Anonymous). ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 10:34 : chx At this state I strongly -1 the patch. I'd like to see a message about what happened (maybe a number of nodes changed would be nice, too) but this is a minor thing -- mayor is that I feel unpublishing such nodes is a must. Let the admin decide whether it fits her purposes to let other uses see them as Anonymous posts or do something else. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ March 17, 2005 - 10:39 : moshe weitzman when we first implemented deletion of users, we discussed a lot and decided to not delete the whole uid row; we removed the email address and set the users.status = 0. I must have missed the patch which implemented the full deletion from the database. I think full deletion is too dangerous because all nodes and comments will disappear, as you've noted. So my suggestion is to soften the deletion which is found in user_edit() as it used to be. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 9, 2005 - 08:20 : Carl McDade How hard would it be to change delete the user but change any content using that users id to first user ownership? This would prevent the house of cards effect. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ April 9, 2005 - 13:04 : Steven We'd need to make every module which stores anything user-related to respond on the user delete event, and then change ownership. It sounds like a large hassle, and I agree with moshe that resetting the e-mail adress and blocking the account is much easier and safer.