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I noticed a former mod who has deleted all their accounts still has their chat account (emphasis mine):

My diamond how now been removed and I have scheduled the deletion of all of my accounts across the network.

Whatever the interpretation for my action, this wasn't done out a sense of pettiness, attention-seeking, or of protesting against Stack Exchange.

This is my protection from the self-harm that seems to be endemic in the community right now. As much as I support Monica and despise the way in which she was deposed, there is seemingly no end to the amount of conflict that this situation and the events around it has plunged the community into.

When looking for dupes, I found that that's a quirk of the system, according to Monica:

The root problem is that when a chat user's parent account gets deleted, the chat account doesn't get reparented. We should fix that, and delete the chat account only when there is no remaining account on that user's network profile that is relevant to the chat server in question.

Now, I'm wondering if it's actually possible to delete a chat account after deleting all accounts on SE sites in the network. After all, you can no longer simply sign in on an SE network account and delete your chat account.

How does that work? Or is this a non-issue because (not saying that it is) there is no personal information associated with the chat account. How does this work?

Sonic commented a link to this answer. That appears to say that the issue in the quote is fixed, that the chat account should be deleted when all users are deleted. That doesn't appear to be the case here, is that a bug?

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    Wait, I found another source which says that chat profiles aren't deleted automatically if they've made more than 1,000 messages. Removing my duplicate vote as this wasn't mentioned in the answer there.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 13:07
  • @Ward-ReinstateMonica Not a duplicate. While I previously voted for that question, I later retracted my vote. The information that answers it wasn't covered in the answer there until after this question was asked. The community's opinion here is to avoid retroactive duplicate closures.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 13:36
  • There's no fixed direction or retroactive prohibition - a duplicate can be old-to-new, new-to-old, because the questions are duplicates, or because one answer on another question (dupe or not) answers the question: meta.stackexchange.com/a/150152/282094 or meta.stackexchange.com/a/32515/282094 or meta.stackexchange.com/a/190478/282094 - If you have a link prohibiting "retroactive duplicate closures" (as with any necessary link) include it in your comment so we don't have to look and not find. Needless to say, your link won't be retroactive (right).
    – Rob
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 15:08
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    @Rob I was not notified of that other comment. That provision you cite only applies if the author is commenting.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 17:23
  • @Rob To quote from your own quote: "if a user comments on their own post"...you didn't comment on your own post, so I wasn't notified.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 17:37

1 Answer 1

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There is no bug. The answer that you mentioned that I previously linked applies in most cases...

…except if the chat profile has posted 1,000 or more messages. In that case, per a staff member's comment on another post, the profile will not be automatically deleted, and removing it will require developer access (not merely moderator access, not even employee access).

As the user's chat history stretches beyond page 20 (each page has 50 messages, so more than 20 pages means the user has posted more than 1,000), this is the case. (Viewing other pages of the chat history requires messing with the URL; the link is of page 21, whose very existence proves this theory.)

I've since edited the post you link (that I linked in a since-deleted comment) to reflect this.

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  • Thanks, that explains a large part of my question. I'll leave it unaccepted for now in the hope that someone can provide insight on the personal information related to the chat account in this specific case. It's probably too much to hope for someone with knowledge of the matter (i.e. staffers) to answer here, but let's give them a chance to respond.
    – JJJ
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 13:39
  • To the GDPR, it doesn't really matter how the account is deleted, manually or automatically, but it has to be deleted on request. (Except for still-relevant bits, such as an active ban)
    – MSalters - reinstate Monica
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 17:23
  • @MSalters-reinstateMonica The page where you go to request profile deletion doesn't state that your chat profile will be deleted, only that your main profile will be. The fact that chat profiles are sometimes automatically deleted is merely provided as a convenience. The company could legally respond to such a lawsuit that a request to delete the chat profile wasn't filed.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 17:25

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