I understand your sentiment but I don't think deleting comments would make sites like these (community driven) appealing. Missing comments creates a big hole to a comment train, look at reddit. Missing/Deleted comments make the whole comment tree below it quite meaningless.
HN would invite a lot of trolls with this an would make it really difficult to create a submission archive that makes sense.
Now I don't know how it handles account deletion but reddit handles that well, a deleted account will retain its comments without a name if the user hasn't deleted all their comments. That makes sense and works well.
HN would invite a lot of trolls with this an would make it really difficult to create a submission archive that makes sense.
Now I don't know how it handles account deletion but reddit handles that well, a deleted account will retain its comments without a name if the user hasn't deleted all their comments. That makes sense and works well.