Comments on: The Semantic Question: To Delete or Not To Delete http://www.designmills.com/2008/09/12/the-semantic-question-to-delete-or-not-to-delete/ Computers, cars, and general nerdiness Sun, 01 Aug 2010 01:00:33 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Rich Holoch http://www.designmills.com/2008/09/12/the-semantic-question-to-delete-or-not-to-delete/#comment-152 Rich Holoch Wed, 05 Nov 2008 22:00:05 +0000 http://www.designmills.com/2008/09/12/the-semantic-question-to-delete-or-not-to-delete/#comment-152 One way to do this is to first "mark for delete" what a user wants to delete, and then notify the user that other objects in the ontology will also be deleted. Somehow, the user must understand at least one rule - that no orphaned data will be left in their ontology. To be very polite, all dependent nodes would be listed as "pending delete" as well as the single item that the user would want to delete. Then the warning question is posed "Do you really want to delete?". Of course, if they have shared data with others - where dependant shared data links are also deleted, then there is a real problem. An alternative would be to never delete, but mark something "inactive" and then show that inactive item greyed out. That would give anyone linked to that item the "intention" of being deleted. The balance between keeping tons of data (and thus requiring the infrastructure to support exponential growth) vs. keeping _relevant_ data as defined by the user is a real anomaly. One way to do this is to first “mark for delete” what a user wants to delete, and then notify the user that other objects in the ontology will also be deleted. Somehow, the user must understand at least one rule - that no orphaned data will be left in their ontology. To be very polite, all dependent nodes would be listed as “pending delete” as well as the single item that the user would want to delete. Then the warning question is posed “Do you really want to delete?”.

Of course, if they have shared data with others - where dependant shared data links are also deleted, then there is a real problem.

An alternative would be to never delete, but mark something “inactive” and then show that inactive item greyed out. That would give anyone linked to that item the “intention” of being deleted.

The balance between keeping tons of data (and thus requiring the infrastructure to support exponential growth) vs. keeping _relevant_ data as defined by the user is a real anomaly.

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