prefacing this with i have no idea if im putting this in the right category.. sorry if i am...
had this thought pop up while i was hiding some of my comments under a post i wasn't too happy about sharing.. why is there only the option to hide comments but not to delete them? and why do we have to reach out to the admins to get our own uploads deleted? is there an administrative reason? ive had this curiosity for quite a while but i wanted to finally properly ask , idk if this has been answered before qwq

hiding and deleting are the same thing, effectively.

if you hid something your message is gone to the world, only visible to yourself (and staff). it's not entirely gone so that you can't just say something toxic or illegal, wait a bit and then try to delete it to dodge punishment, and so that if you do get in trouble the staff can hide what you said but still point at it to you and say "Stop it".

vedacia said:
prefacing this with i have no idea if im putting this in the right category.. sorry if i am...
had this thought pop up while i was hiding some of my comments under a post i wasn't too happy about sharing.. why is there only the option to hide comments but not to delete them? and why do we have to reach out to the admins to get our own uploads deleted? is there an administrative reason? ive had this curiosity for quite a while but i wanted to finally properly ask , idk if this has been answered before qwq

You can't delete your comments because it would lead to misuse by malicious parties. Someone could easily post or say something against the rules or illegal and then permanently erase any evidence of it.
Thus, we only allow you to hide comments/forum posts so that nobody other than the admins could see the message.

For artworks, it is not that you can't delete your own uploads per se, but rather, you can only delete them if you are the artist/commissioner/copyright holder since anybody can repost whatever they want here on e621.
Most of the artworks you see here are posted by third-parties as opposed to the artists themselves (which you can tell if they have a checkmark next to their tag).

If we allow the original poster to simply delete whatever they posted, then it will again lead to cases of misuse with posters deliberately purging everything they have posted on the site because of a grudge or personal vendetta.
Not to mention that anybody else (including the artist) would be prevented from posting said artwork again due to our 'Do not knowingly upload or share previously deleted content' rule.

these answers do actually satisfy my curiosity thank you very much

thegreatwolfgang said:
For artworks, it is not that you can't delete your own uploads per se, but rather, you can only delete them if you are the artist/commissioner/copyright holder since anybody can repost whatever they want here on e621.
Most of the artworks you see here are posted by third-parties as opposed to the artists themselves (which you can tell if they have a checkmark next to their tag).

This is phrased like that collection of people get a deletion button, but just to clarify they have to go through a takedown, no non-staff get a delete button

dba_afish said:
hiding and deleting are the same thing, effectively.

if you hid something your message is gone to the world, only visible to yourself (and staff). it's not entirely gone so that you can't just say something toxic or illegal, wait a bit and then try to delete it to dodge punishment, and so that if you do get in trouble the staff can hide what you said but still point at it to you and say "Stop it".

I honestly must've completely forgotten that (assuming I ever knew it)
Every time I saw the Hide option, I get reminded of a toggle that every user has in their settings to show Hidden posts/comments
I guess it wasn't overly clear to me that that toggle only works on your own stuff
If you made a comment, then Hid it, how would it show up to other non-staff users? Would it take the Facebook route and have a blurb that says "Hidden comment" or would there be nothing there? Would the details of the post show that there is 1 comment but you just can't see it? Or would even that trace be removed from unprivileged eyes?

nin10dope said:
If you made a comment, then Hid it, how would it show up to other non-staff users? Would it take the Facebook route and have a blurb that says "Hidden comment" or would there be nothing there? Would the details of the post show that there is 1 comment but you just can't see it? Or would even that trace be removed from unprivileged eyes?

As far as other Users are concerned, there's nothing there. True, the blurb that says how many comments are on the post would be off by 1 for each hidden comment, but that would be the only public trace of their existence.

clawstripe said:
As far as other Users are concerned, there's nothing there. True, the blurb that says how many comments are on the post would be off by 1 for each hidden comment, but that would be the only public trace of their existence.

Thank you lol
I was always skeptical/anxious if there was a point

when you hide a comment its only visible to you (if enabled in settings) or to the staff. the public cant see it. on other boorus its the same but hide is delete. as for deleting your own post its a public imageboard, not deviantart, if users could delete their own posts. the site would be losing stuff randomly all the time. hope that helps!