h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Is there a way to delete messages that have been posted onto your "My Messages" section in the same way we can unsubscribe to a conversation?

You mean messages left on your Personal Space? I don't think so, no - though you can, of course, unsubscribe from those too.

Yes I do mean on my Personal Space. I have unsubscribed but it is frustrating to still have the message displayed .... a sort of "spam" from a newbie who seemed to go wild and contact lots of people with a "hook" from their personal info and then end up wanting you to e-mail him. Would love to delete it .... ....

It is possible to get threads moved, but - forgive me - this doesn't sound very high priority As long as the poster doesn't keep hassling you, it will just sit there until new messages are posted and it will, eventually, drop off the end.

A process you can speed up by posting something new on all the other messages there or, indeed, leaving yourself new messages so as to shove it down to the bottom

Agree its not high priority as such, just annoying / nuisance value really and a desire to clear out the "rubbish".

Appreciate your suggestions

> "Is there a way to delete messages that have been posted onto your "My Messages" section"

No - not unless you can get the hosts/mods to do it. That was one of my earliest questions before joining h2g2 because I'd already seen complaints about it. Beyond that simple negative, the official answer I was given was untrue in every important respect (including all it implied by extension).

NB You used to be able to avoid people being able to leave you messages by the simple expedient of not starting a personal space page at all. That got changed many software updates ago though.

It is a shame, I would have thought in this day and age with all the technological tweeks out there that we would have the capability of deleting unwanted messages posted to our own space, which is in effect our web page

It is good to have a personal space but when you get people who "spam" and are a nuisance more than anything else, it would be great to be able to tidy up and get rid of their contributions which are sadly not anything that I would think a host /moderator would consider deleting as it is not offensive, just annoying ....

mmmm I wonder how many others have had this sort of message ....

I think the abuses the current set up is open to are preferable to the possible abuses if researchers did have the ability to delete messages from their PS.

At present, anyone can post to anyone else's PS and the recipient of the message can engage or ignore as they please.

If I posted to someone's PS and they miss it, or don't want to talk, then heigh ho. But if I found someone had deleted a message, I'd see that as quite aggressive, not really in the spirit of the community. In the first I'm being ignored, but in the second I'm actually being silenced.

I'm aware that's nothing like this case, by the way I'm just saying, I think there'd be some unpleasant consequences as regards having the ability to 'delete'.

I take your point, there again if you posted to somebody and they deleted you offhand with no response, I know it is rude but there again you have saved wasting time and effort communicating with that person.

In an ideal world we would not be having this discussion.