I look at a lot of posts each week and as I navigate around I go straight to a users post feed the posts they have personally done rather than reposts from other people that appear in the blog feed. Sometimes I'm really impressed with what I see, passion and personality and a lot of effort in presentation, use of their own photographs rather than stock images and some pride in their work...I also see the opposite. I curate accordingly and move on making a mental note to come back, or not, depending on what I've seen.

We can all do whatever we like here, freedom and all, but something that irks me is when people delete posts (for any reason) and edit into the text field the word DELETED, ERASED or ERROR. I see that a lot.

𝑫𝒆𝒍𝒆𝒕𝒆𝒅

I recently had a case in one of my communities where I'd contacted a user who had not followed the community rules. I advised the user and somewhat predictably the user whinged and complained, I reiterated that I have to enforce the rules on everyone to be fair on everyone and that because it's my community I have that right...and the user complained some more...and the next thing had deleted the entire post, copied it into another one and reposted it elsewhere in another community. That's fine of course, freedom and all, however it left a post on that user's post feed that said DELETED and I don't feel that's a good look for one's post feed.

We all make posting errors; a little while back I posted one of my Friday #weekend-engagement posts which I was editing, too early in the week and only an hour or so after my previous post...It happens. I edited it of course, but I didn't just write the word DELETED and move on, I wrote another full post, called out my own error and moved on. If you're interested in seeing it you can do so here. It wasn't a great post, but then none of mine really are. It showed some ownership and effort though.

I could have just edited the text out and written the word DELETED of course, but I took ownership and responsibility and, besides, it would drive me fucken bonkers to have a post on my post feed that simply said DELETED. It's about how I present myself, my self-respect and, of course, I'd never want to earn rewards on such a post.

Everything remains on the blockchain. I'm not sure if people understand that. Anyone can search any one else's posts and comments and find them, even the deleted text and every edit that has ever been made on the post or comment. Nothing is hidden or permanently deleted.

I know people delete posts, or edit them, as they have a rethink on what they wrote and want to change it, maybe they spoke rashly and have decided it wasn't legitimate and they want to remove the text...but it's still there and can be found, very easily in fact - anyone can do it. Editing happens for many reasons though, including things like my fuackassery with the post mentioned above, my mistake. I agree with editing however I disagree with people editing a post and putting the single word DELETED or ERROR into it, especially if they simply cut the text out and repost it elsewhere.

𝑬𝒇𝒇𝒐𝒓𝒕

As I've said a couple times in this post, we are all free to act in accordance with our own wishes however I believe a user should make an attempt to represent themselves well and a post feed that looks like the one above isn't the way to do that. Just for the record, the user above was reposting (recycling) her own work multiple times to gain more rewards on the same work then deleting the original post text so she wouldn't get caught...but she did get caught...remember how everything on the blockchain is recoverable as previously mentioned? And...someone is always watching.

I understand that mistakes happen and sometimes posts need to be edited due to typo and fact errors, changes of mind, image changes, and so on...but there's a better way to do it than simply deleting the original text and writing DELETED or ERROR into the post. That post above, the one I had to edit, took me about fifteen minutes to write and post and whilst it was still far too close to the previous post from a time perspective, it was the best way to go for me as it represents a little effort and ownership and keeps my post feed looking better...even though the post wasn't my best work.

These days, I keep a post in draft-form which is complete and ready to publish, a generic post which I can use to edit into a mistake-post if I need to; that reduces the lead-time from mistake post to rectification post and means as soon as I realise I have to edit out an existing post I can drop that text in there in a matter of minutes. It seems prudent and will mitigate a lot of the stress at the time.

_{Note: Since that posting mistake above, I never tag posts until the moment before I publish. That was what I did wrong; I had the post tagged up and ready to go and mistakenly hit publish instead of save. So, best practice with any posts is to add the tags at the very moment right before publishing as a post cannot be published without tags; that way there's no chance of premature postjaculation.}

Sometimes a post may need to be totally deleted and re-done...but that doesn't mean one needs to delete their effort, ownership and responsibility to represent themselves well. Showing effort, writing some new text is a good way to address issues like this when they occur and will be much better than a post that says, DELETED, sitting on a person's post feed, and which is almost certainly going to have its rewards removed.

Have you ever edited a post? Do you even know how? Have you ever made a mistake so badly that you felt you had to delete the entire text of a post? If so, what did you do - post the word DELETED or did you write in some new text to present it, and represent yourself, better on your post feed?

Feel free to comment if you like, share your thoughts or stories and ideas on how best to manage those times users make catastrophic posting errors that need to be totally reversed with a whole post-edit.