mastodon as a software and as a project ethos has zero regard for people who want to delete all their toots and start over on their same old handle. if you delete your account you WILL NOT BE ABLE TO GET YOUR OLD HANDLE BACK WITHOUT BREAKING FEDERATION AND THE LOCAL INSTANCE DATABASE

@squirrel it is in the red warning box on the delete page...

@bea yes, it's not without warning. but it's not a good stance.

@bea also, "undeleting cannot be done" is ambiguous and not the same as "you will never have your old handle back but without your old toots"

@squirrel @bea Yeah, we need to revise account deletion. :/ In my mind we need three options:

* Erase all user data except the username and password, don't disable login, allow the user to start fresh
* Erase all user data except the username and password, but disable login so the username can't be taken by someone else
* Erase all user data including the username, so the username can be taken by someone else

@noelle @bea I think deleting all user data (including propagating to remote instances so followers stop following the account, which is my issue specifically) and suspending the account so an admin has to unsuspend and maybe change the password so it can be used again is a good compromise, if the account can then be used again with no user data remaining.