[drupal-devel] [bug] deleted users' nodes disappear

[moshe weitzman]

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:   moshe weitzman
 Status:       patch

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.


moshe weitzman



Previous comments:
------------------------------------------------------------------------

March 17, 2005 - 09:23 : 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 - 09:34 : 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.