Delete Button. Yammer take a hint. • Hacker News Board

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#21

Post by prateekdayal » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:19 AM UTC

patio11 wrote: post #10

Features which by definition never generate sales are dead last on my priorities, too. I have to log into the Rails console to completely kill an account, as opposed to refunding or turning off billing. These features are also frequently a usability cluster flop because users are absolutely impervious to wording like "If you tell us to delete this WE CANNOT GET IT BACK."

I agree with you patio but if you are serving to a geeky audience, the ability to leave and export your data can actually help some people decide in favor of your app when evaluating choices.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#22

Post by omarkassim » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:23 AM UTC

Just wanted to add this in:

Scott Balentine (CSM), Mar-03 10:29 am (PST): Hey Omar,

At Yammer, our relationship is with our users. All data, whether from a free or paid network, cannot be deleted by Yammer. This would violate our Terms of Service. You as an Admin of a paid account can delete any data on the network. Like you said before, the data is owned by you. Since this data was not deleted before I downgraded you, I will re-upgrade you for however long you need to delete the data in your network at no charge to you. As a paid network, no individual users will have to delete anything at all.

You can delete messages using the "Delete" link under the "More" menu at the bottom of each post.

Let me know if you need anything else.

Scott

-- Delete each message manually. Please.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#23

Post by ericflo » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:28 AM UTC

dsl wrote: post #9

simonw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine there's a more innocent reason: deleting things is HARD in systems designed to scale. There are likely to be denormalisations, multiple redundant copies, separate search indexes, caches... bulk deleting an account actually ends up involving a fairly large amount of code.

No its really not. I worked on a system where the average user had hundreds of thousands of objects across dozens of servers. The delete button sets an account flag saying "this user is deleted." The front end UI honored that and no longer showed the user. A half dozen DELETE tasks were then tossed into a job queue, one for each major subsystem (cache, archival storage, etc). The visual effect of deletion was instant…

You just described a (perfectly reasonable) system which would take a nontrivial amount of code to build.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#24

Post by afrombie » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:30 AM UTC

ninjastar99 wrote: post #16

I had this EXACT same issue with Yammer about 8 months ago. The experience of canceling my account made me want to bolt off their system and killed any hesitation I had. I checked out Presently ( http://present.ly ) the next day and after a week of using it, it erased all of our data randomly. No go. Not a great first impression. The following week we discovered Socialcast. And we've been VERY happy with Socialcast (…

Glad to hear you are enjoying Socialcast. Would love to chat with you sometime about your experience and how we can improve the service. Drop me an email if you want to chat, tim [at] socialcast.com.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#25

Post by gnubardt » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:33 AM UTC

Technical considerations aside it's still good practice to make it easier for customers to cancel. It makes them feel more comfortable signing up. Joel wrote a few great articles on it: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/08/23.html

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#26

Post by pbreit » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:44 AM UTC

People probably think that Yammer purposefully makes it difficult when the reality is that 1) departing customers are a small fraction of users and 2) it's difficult to prioritize highly a feature to "close an account".

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#27

Post by magic_haze » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:50 AM UTC

This is an unrelated rant, but aargh... what is up with the use of that text-shadow for _normal_ text? It's showing up everywhere nowadays: I don't mind it for headings, but how does anyone find it easier to read for huge blocks of text? And it almost always is accompanied by scrollbars that are super laggy.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#28

Post by patio11 » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 5:57 AM UTC

prateekdayal wrote: post #21

patio11 wrote: post #10

Features which by definition never generate sales are dead last on my priorities, too. I have to log into the Rails console to completely kill an account, as opposed to refunding or turning off billing. These features are also frequently a usability cluster flop because users are absolutely impervious to wording like "If you tell us to delete this WE CANNOT GET IT BACK."

I agree with you patio but if you are serving to a geeky audience, the ability to leave and export your data can actually help some people decide in favor of your app when evaluating choices.

I know a lot of people think and profess that that matters to their decisionmaking criteria. I also know a lot of geeks think and profess that button color has no impact on whether they'd sign up for something.

There is compelling data with regards to the on-the-ground truth of one of these propositions.

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#29

Post by random42 » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 6:21 AM UTC

pavel_lishin wrote: post #12

simonw wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd imagine there's a more innocent reason: deleting things is HARD in systems designed to scale. There are likely to be denormalisations, multiple redundant copies, separate search indexes, caches... bulk deleting an account actually ends up involving a fairly large amount of code.

> deleting things is HARD in systems designed to scale. That's an excuse, not a reason.

This combined with, THERE IS NO BUSINESS INCENTIVE TO DO SO... is pretty much a reason.

Time is a zero sum game. If I can make features/fixes that brings me money, why would I spend time/money/effort to design system for effectively... well, NOT make money, at the cost of the former?

Re: Delete Button. Yammer take a hint.

#30

Post by joshfraser » Tue, Mar 08, 2011, 8:06 AM UTC

ninjastar99 wrote: post #16

I had this EXACT same issue with Yammer about 8 months ago. The experience of canceling my account made me want to bolt off their system and killed any hesitation I had. I checked out Presently ( http://present.ly ) the next day and after a week of using it, it erased all of our data randomly. No go. Not a great first impression. The following week we discovered Socialcast. And we've been VERY happy with Socialcast (…

+1 for socialcast