Permanent Deletion of Image Samples

This discussion is separated from topic #13646 since I think it's enough of an issue to warrant its own thread.

I think image samples should be hard deleted (or double deleted, permanently deleted, etc) from the server the same way we handle corrupted images, as all of them serve no real purpose on the server, and instead cause more trouble for users trying to find sample posts they've favorited (and the favorites haven't moved yet).

And since we handle sample images a different way now through the use of replaceme, we should be getting no more image samples uploaded that can't be replaced. Of course, unless the original fullsize is already uploaded, but still.

My proposal is this. For every image that match the search image_sample status:deleted parent:any:

• Check it for any annotations/translations/notes and move them to the parent if it hasn't been done already. image_sample ~translated ~partially_translated ~annotated status:deleted
• Move all favorites to the parent post (assuming that is not also an image_sample and is the actual post replacement)
• Delete the post.

There are a few upsides to doing this job that make it worthwhile, I think:

• Would free up some space on the server. Perhaps not much, but space regardless.
• Would fix inaccurate/misleading deletion counts for users that have uploaded a lot of samples in the past unknowingly (as we didn't have a policy for Twitter samples until several months ago). Looks better for their user record, and arguably makes for a more accurate representation of their uploading performance.
• The above, in the past, would also have increased the upload limit for users, but it has been a long time now (and the way we handle image samples leads to few cases like these anymore)
• Users that have sample images favorited (and those favorites haven't been moved yet), on favorites migration, don't have to search status:deleted to find the post they favorited (as deleted posts don't show up by default, and they might be confused if they don't exactly know how the deleted gallery works). This means they get an extra tag to search (and this is especially meaningful if they're a member-level user that can only search 2 tags at once -- fav:self status:deleted already takes up their whole limit).

Of course, I also think there are a few downsides, such as:

• Comments on a sample post not being moved over. That can't really be helped, unless there's actually a way to do this. Correct me if so.
• Tag edit history on a sample post, among other things, also being lost for good. To me this is trivial, but someone might care about seeing their contribution history...?
• Sample uploader doesn't get any credit for their upload. But this isn't that big a deal, or it shouldn't be.

Anyways, I'd like to have a discussion about it as I know it does bother some users. If we can follow through with such a proposal, I imagine it'd help a lot.

Brought up also because I uploaded post #2857640 on mistake -- I don't think it should be moved to deleted gallery as it's a legitimized post through the artist's pixiv (even if he did it unknowingly or perhaps intentionally), but I do think it should be permanently deleted (which is odd for me to say, having differing opinions on a post's livelihood when it comes to permanent or non-permanent deletion).

Pinging some users for good measure, as I do want to hear their opinion... Hopefully this isn't annoying.

@albert @Type-kun @Hillside_Moose @evazion @BrokenEagle98 @kittey @Apollyon @Randeel @CodeKyuubi @Unbreakable @reiyasona @chinatsu @Shallie

I'm ambivalent. Yes, a lot of my old samples were because there was literally no choice (before twitter :orig discovery, tumblr _raw discovery, and the old file size limitations on scan uploads), but my salt's gone away in the time since deletion.

I'm pretty much fine with this. It would be nice if comments on image samples could be transferred over to the parent image but I can live without them.

Mikaeri said:
This means they get an extra tag to search (and this is especially meaningful if they're a member-level user that can only search 2 tags at once -- fav:self status:deleted already takes up their whole limit).

FYI, "status:deleted" does not count for the 2 tags limit for us members. The other status subtags do, but that one is free.

Mikaeri said:

• Check it for any annotations/translations/notes and move them to the parent if it hasn't been done already. image_sample ~translated ~partially_translated ~annotated status:deleted

How would that work reliably? Maybe if the “copy all notes” option was used and there were no note modifications on the to be deleted child post after the parent post’s “notes copied from ...” note. But otherwise... :-/

• Comments on a sample post not being moved over. That can't really be helped, unless there's actually a way to do this. Correct me if so.

Shouldn’t be harder to implement than favorite moving if someone wants to do it, I guess.

• Tag edit history on a sample post, among other things, also being lost for good. To me this is trivial, but someone might care about seeing their contribution history...?

From what I understand, that would also reduce the “Post Changes” count of users. Some users might object to that e-peen shrinkage.

CodeKyuubi said:

I'm ambivalent. Yes, a lot of my old samples were because there was literally no choice (before twitter :orig discovery, tumblr _raw discovery, and the old file size limitations on scan uploads), but my salt's gone away in the time since deletion.

Fair enough, but I still think the deletion count should strive to be as accurate a representation of upload performance regardless of samples. Duplicates, however, are a different story.

nonamethanks said:

FYI, "status:deleted" does not count for the 2 tags limit for us members. The other status subtags do, but that one is free.

Oh, hm. Noted.

kittey said:

How would that work reliably? Maybe if the “copy all notes” option was used and there were no note modifications on the to be deleted child post after the parent post’s “notes copied from ...” note. But otherwise... :-/

Mmm, it might not have to be done to begin with. I imagine most of the translations have already moved over, I just say that in case there are any posts where translations haven't been moved to the parent post for an explicit replacement.

Shouldn’t be harder to implement than favorite moving if someone wants to do it, I guess.

Well, let's hope someone does -- I think this might mean something to a few users, but as tapnek said, some users can live without it.

From what I understand, that would also reduce the “Post Changes” count of users. Some users might object to that e-peen shrinkage.

It'd be a bit ridiculous, don'tcha think? I mean, it's pretty easy to pad your "tag edits" count. Just get used to tagging in batch with scripts, visit artist CG galleries since a lot of which share the same common tags... etc. So it shouldn't really mean much, as we don't see those mean much.

I don't really have a strong opinion of this per se, I have never uploaded a sample and I probably don't have many edits on them. I guess it would be better to remove them since they mostly just take up space.

But as long as moving favourites messes up the order, I'm more against this.

Unbreakable said:

I don't really have a strong opinion of this per se, I have never uploaded a sample and I probably don't have many edits on them. I guess it would be better to remove them since they mostly just take up space.

But as long as moving favourites messes up the order, I'm more against this.

Aie, that's difficult. But I do understand that favorites migration is still a problem (albeit that's its own ordeal, ideally separate from this one). I think evazion has said it would be difficult to do that in-place, but even so...

From my perspective this is a small issue, although that's because such things as deletion count don't really matter that much to me, but I do get that there are different strokes for different folks and so would prefer a solution that would be the most amenable to the majority. If possible this would include clearing up upload records while also preserving the work that went into those posts, e.g. tag gardening, commenting, favoriting (to include favorite groups), etc.

Maybe instead of deleting a post, there could be a new function that would for lack of better words "archive" a post. Archived posts would be removed from upload records while maintaining the integrity of the post. Some spit-balled ideas for archived posts could include:

• Deleting the sample image
• Instead show the image for the non-sample post
• Removed from the regular post search
• Although would still be shown from favorites and favorite groups
• Could also be linked with post ##### links
• Modify the layout to indicate the alternate status
• Different color border for thumbnails
• Different color of top info box (not the red of deleted or the blue of post pending)
• Have a link to the fullsize somewhere...
• ...but not a link from the fullsize to the sample

People doing this would have to watch out for the likes of post #2463814 which have parents that are not the non-sample version of the same image.

This looks like the work against it is much higher than benefit.

The first point...I don't know, but this seems like a little issue. Albert told oncce that the deleted images don't really mess around much with anything.
The second point is probably only interesting for Moderators and they already looks pretty close at the user's history when promoting. As for regular users...if they are truly interested then also they will find out that the have saples. I was for it in the past (samples should't count as normal deletions, but I think closer inspection from Mods is better
Third point is a pretty non-existing upside for this.
Fourth point: I don't really care for the order of my favs, but others do. I see this was mentioned above, so one should wait until evazion says something about this.

I forgot to mention one benefit though, and it's the fact that posts in the active gallery are kept up to date regularly by tag gardeners, translators and the like, making those favorites easier to search for.

Personally, I view that as a huge benefit, much more than whatever I'd lose in ordfav. I'd rather my favorites be kept up to date with tags in searches rather than fumble through all of them just because someone mintagged the sample and then a better user replaced it and also improved the tags on it.

I'm just thinking, if there are users out there that *have* favorited samples, and now suddenly don't know how to find them, this will ease some of their troubles, even if they might go "what the fuck" at first, because they just favorited a buncha stuff without their knowledge during the migration. We already do this for Tumblr samples, or at least, RaisingK, Qpax, myself among other gallery sample gardeners do this (we moved favorites when the fullsize was already up from pixiv/seiga/etc).

.grey said:

I forgot to mention one benefit though, and it's the fact that posts in the active gallery are kept up to date regularly by tag gardeners, translators and the like, making those favorites easier to search for.

Personally, I view that as a huge benefit, much more than whatever I'd lose in ordfav. I'd rather my favorites be kept up to date with tags in searches rather than fumble through all of them just because someone mintagged the sample and then a better user replaced it and also improved the tags on it.

I'm just thinking, if there are users out there that *have* favorited samples, and now suddenly don't know how to find them, this will ease some of their troubles, even if they might go "what the fuck" at first, because they just favorited a buncha stuff without their knowledge during the migration. We already do this for Tumblr samples, or at least, RaisingK, Qpax, myself among other gallery sample gardeners do this (we moved favorites when the fullsize was already up from pixiv/seiga/etc).

.grey said:

This discussion is separated from topic #13646 since I think it's enough of an issue to warrant its own thread.

I think image samples should be hard deleted (or double deleted, permanently deleted, etc) from the server the same way we handle corrupted images, as all of them serve no real purpose on the server, and instead cause more trouble for users trying to find sample posts they've favorited (and the favorites haven't moved yet).

And since we handle sample images a different way now through the use of replaceme, we should be getting no more image samples uploaded that can't be replaced. Of course, unless the original fullsize is already uploaded, but still.

My proposal is this. For every image that match the search image_sample status:deleted parent:any:

• Check it for any annotations/translations/notes and move them to the parent if it hasn't been done already. image_sample ~translated ~partially_translated ~annotated status:deleted
• Move all favorites to the parent post (assuming that is not also an image_sample and is the actual post replacement)
• Delete the post.

There are a few upsides to doing this job that make it worthwhile, I think:

• Would free up some space on the server. Perhaps not much, but space regardless.
• Would fix inaccurate/misleading deletion counts for users that have uploaded a lot of samples in the past unknowingly (as we didn't have a policy for Twitter samples until several months ago). Looks better for their user record, and arguably makes for a more accurate representation of their uploading performance.
• The above, in the past, would also have increased the upload limit for users, but it has been a long time now (and the way we handle image samples leads to few cases like these anymore)
• Users that have sample images favorited (and those favorites haven't been moved yet), on favorites migration, don't have to search status:deleted to find the post they favorited (as deleted posts don't show up by default, and they might be confused if they don't exactly know how the deleted gallery works). This means they get an extra tag to search (and this is especially meaningful if they're a member-level user that can only search 2 tags at once -- fav:self status:deleted already takes up their whole limit).

Of course, I also think there are a few downsides, such as:

• Comments on a sample post not being moved over. That can't really be helped, unless there's actually a way to do this. Correct me if so.
• Tag edit history on a sample post, among other things, also being lost for good. To me this is trivial, but someone might care about seeing their contribution history...?
• Sample uploader doesn't get any credit for their upload. But this isn't that big a deal, or it shouldn't be.

Anyways, I'd like to have a discussion about it as I know it does bother some users. If we can follow through with such a proposal, I imagine it'd help a lot.

Brought up also because I uploaded post #2857640 on mistake -- I don't think it should be moved to deleted gallery as it's a legitimized post through the artist's pixiv (even if he did it unknowingly or perhaps intentionally), but I do think it should be permanently deleted (which is odd for me to say, having differing opinions on a post's livelihood when it comes to permanent or non-permanent deletion).

You have any help for me to delete my post permanently I tried and I can’t figure it out

MastersStudiosDude said:

You have any help for me to delete my post permanently I tried and I can’t figure it out

The post in question has already been marked as deleted. Just leave it like that.