User blog comment:BertH/New Forums now available in Labs/@comment-188432-20121202033808/@comment-452-20121203175157

I also had the same question, due to having the same local policy, and was told that I was not permitted to hide the remove link, due to the fact that "it was possible the old way".

As CzechOut mentioned, the problem is that the old method didn't explicitly have a link inviting users to remove their comment. While I've not had the misfortune of having to argue with a user about it yet, I fully expect their response to be "If I'm not allowed to remove my comment, why is the link there in the first place?" - that's exactly what I would say if I was in their position. I think it's ridiculous that we are supposed to enforce a policy of "never use that link" instead of simply being allowed to hide the link.

That said, Toughpigs' response was far better than TomekO's.

I fully agree that threads should keep the "wiki spirit". If threads are supposed to have the "wiki spirit", they should be normal wiki "pages" which can be moved to any location, and imported/exported just like any other page on the wiki, instead of pseudo pages which do not respond to ?action=edit.

Until just now, I hadn't realised before that non-admins could remove any post - I assumed that they could only delete their own posts, and that thread authors could delete any comment to their post - isn't that how blog comments work? Wait, no, I can't remove my own blog comments. So the question is: Why is it impossible for a user to delete their own blog comments, but it's possible for them to delete any forum comment? That makes no sense at all, ordinary users don't have rights to "delete" (or hide) normal wiki pages, they only have rights to edit them and wipe them. Therefore, it is not in the "wiki spirit" to allow users to "delete" their own forum posts - it is only in the "wiki spirit" to allow wiping them.