Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's a common outlook to have if you've never run a site where users upload content. In practice, if you give your users a way to damage or delete their own account, they'll do it without giving it any thought. Then they'll think about it. And they'll want to undo it. When they don't find an "undelete" button, they'll write you an email. And if you don't have an easy switch you can flip to magically fix the problem…
Oh please, do condescend to me about what sites I have run and which I have not, much less ones I have or have not written myself. Look, I (and likely many others here) know what you're talking about, and it's not necessary. You can deactivate things, sure, but you can also say "This cannot be undone," and people will know what that means . Software has commonly operated this way for almost the entire GUI era (at lea…
I can only throw in my experience, which is that users of the sites I run have a history of not understanding what it means when they hit the delete button, regardless of how many warnings you give them.
As I said, it's a trade off. The upside for the site owner is less headache and angry users. The downside, at least in my experience, is nothing (apart from a red X on this website we're discussing today).