(1) I don't think PG is the right person to ask, he passed the mantle a while ago.
(2) It may seem like it should be a basic right to have your account deleted, but in practice that only works as long as you don't interact with others, if you interact with others and then your portion of the conversation gets removed you effectively ruin the record. Unless everybody starts quoting everybody else to make sure that deletions don't leave the comment threads unintelligible.
(3) having your account replaced with 'deleted' is a useful suggestion
(4) in the meantime, say stuff that you're prepared to stand by and pretend that 'online' is just like 'offline', you don't get to make up the terms unless you go through the trouble of making your own website.
(5) You're volunteering all this stuff, nobody forces you to.
The rules of HN and other internet fora are pretty clear, what you write gets associated with your username and it will likely never go away entirely (google cache, wayback machine, users caching, search engines and replications of the db elsewhere). Choose your username and comment accordingly.
If you regret something specific that you wrote you can ask [email protected] to remove it for you (they'll likely oblige if the request is reasonable), but if you can avoid tasking the moderators with more work than they already have I'm sure that would be appreciated.
(2) It may seem like it should be a basic right to have your account deleted, but in practice that only works as long as you don't interact with others, if you interact with others and then your portion of the conversation gets removed you effectively ruin the record. Unless everybody starts quoting everybody else to make sure that deletions don't leave the comment threads unintelligible.
(3) having your account replaced with 'deleted' is a useful suggestion
(4) in the meantime, say stuff that you're prepared to stand by and pretend that 'online' is just like 'offline', you don't get to make up the terms unless you go through the trouble of making your own website.
(5) You're volunteering all this stuff, nobody forces you to.
The rules of HN and other internet fora are pretty clear, what you write gets associated with your username and it will likely never go away entirely (google cache, wayback machine, users caching, search engines and replications of the db elsewhere). Choose your username and comment accordingly.
If you regret something specific that you wrote you can ask [email protected] to remove it for you (they'll likely oblige if the request is reasonable), but if you can avoid tasking the moderators with more work than they already have I'm sure that would be appreciated.