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Overview: Optimizing Deleted Users Afterlife

This page is an overview.
Detailed FRs will be presented in separate pages each.
Therefore, this page doesn't state any information on release, maintainer a.s.o.

The page contents will be supplemented by leifos, according to further findings.

The page will be presented to the SIG Recht & E-Learning.

1 Initial Problem

Deleting users may become a legal requirement in many scenarios.
By now (v8), deleting users already yields good results in terms of privacy compliance and system stability, as well.
Some pieces of optimisation, however, could still be done:

  • Test and survey continue to have an "Author" indication with the deleted user's first and last name (both for whole object and for individual questions).
    This refers to the GUI and the DB, as well.
  • DB tables frm_posts and frm_threads still keep the username of a deleted user.
    Presumably, this is related to the "Forum Statistics" feature.
  • After deletion, different GUIs display different "remains":
    • Some only show an empty space:
      • History of the page editor
      • File > Versions > Uploaded by
      • Study Programme > Assignments > Completed by
      • Comments in News Timeline (in group)
      • Survey > Participants (if invitated only but not participated)
      • Test > History (or logging in Administration): Executing user
    • Some show "Undisclosed" (German: "Nicht freigegeben") which might mislead users to thinking, only the user's profile hasn't been published:
      • File > Uploaded by
      • Weblink > History: Username
      • Wiki > Last modified by
      • Data Collection > Entry > Owner and > Last modified by

2 Conceptual Summary

The following details are results of a feature workshop.

  • As to the different display of "remains", there should be a uniform way throughout the system to show that the user who once was indicated here, has been been deleted meanwhile.
    • An infrastructure in the User Service should be introduced that offers uniform presentation of deleted user information (incl. name data and the letter avatar)
    • A uniform wording should be introduced for that purpose, a first suggestion is "User account deleted" (German: "Benutzerkonto gelöscht").
  • As to the "Author" indication in test/surveys, there are two possible objections:
    • Legal: For purposes of copyright or similar, keeping the name information of the author might be desirable.
    • Technical: The name Information is simply a string that is completed in the field when the item (test, survey, question) is created (title, prename, surname).
      So, when deleting a user account, there isn't any connection anymore between it and the name information in the "Author" field.
      The content of the field might even have been changed in the meantime.
    • So, the only possible approach is to make it configurable whether the "Author" field is obligatory and automatically completed.

3 User Interface Modifications

not applicable

4 Technical Information

not applicable

5 Privacy

not applicable

6 Security

not applicable

7 Contact

8 Funding

not applicable

9 Discussion

10 Implementation

not applicable

Last edited: 2. Nov 2023, 15:52, Suittenpointner, Florian [suittenpointner]