Diane- I think you misunderstand the reason for the recycle bin. It isn't so that staff can check on our message deletions. We as admins DO have the power and authority to remove posts for reason OR by request of the poster. As I understand it that is what this query was about--request of the poster. Only the poster hadn't made the request correctly. Not even STAFF can actually delete a post from the recycle bin--but it is removed from public view--it is just the way the boards work and have always worked. Even in the old days when board admins didn't know about and couldn't access the recycle bin--one did exist. When a post was deleted it went to a deleted file that only staff could access--the recycle bin is merely an updated version of the old deleted file. Joan In a message dated 9/12/2009 11:32:51 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, dhettrick@earthlink.net writes: Not a hoax? Ok, then. Remember that we do not have the power or technical ability to actually delete a post. Posts are the copyrighted property of the author - that's why we can't edit messages. When we "delete" a board message, all we are doing is moving it to a holding folder for staff to look at and decide what to do. So, as mentioned a while back, the most appropriate thing to do is to refer the author to staff to request that all their posts be removed from all boards. This is the most direct route, even for one message, as staff would need to verify that the author actually wants to delete the post. Diane in Seattle

At 04:17 PM 9/12/2009, Joan wrote: >I think you misunderstand the reason for the recycle bin. It isn't so that >staff can check on our message deletions. We as admins DO have the power >and authority to remove posts for reason OR by request of the poster. As I >understand it that is what this query was about--request of the poster. Only >the poster hadn't made the request correctly. > And there is one more fairly rare but possible scenario. Someone other than the poster COULD write to the Board Admin demanding to "delete all my posts". It is fairly simply to forge/spoof an email address and unless you are scanning headers line by line, you could miss it. I mention because it did happen to me -- once only -- where someone pretending to be the poster tried to engineer a mass removal of posts describing research results with which they disagreed. OTOH, if you as Board Admin INSIST that the poster use the Report Abuse link to request deletion, the bottom line is they have to login to their Ancestry account to do so, thus identifying themselves as the poster -- or as someone who just wants the post deleted for their own reasons. Pat