[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #38109: Improvements to user deletion

[WordPress Trac]

#38109: Improvements to user deletion
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 Reporter:  tomdxw          |      Owner:
     Type:  enhancement     |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  Users           |    Version:  4.6.1
 Severity:  normal          |   Keywords:
  Focuses:  administration  |
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 User deletion in WordPress, at the moment, is not straightforward.

 When you click "delete" on users who have authored content, you are
 presented with this ultimatum:

 [[Image(https://i.imgur.com/11ex3hz.png)]]

 At my company, we build and host WP sites for clients and we almost never
 make decisions about content. But we do sometimes want to delete users,
 for instance in the situation where a person who works for a client leaves
 their position as they have been promoted or left for another job. In that
 case we would like to be able to delete the user account of that person.
 But without knowing how to answer the question of which user to assign
 their content to, we're forced to ask the client to make that decision.

 With a view to making it possible for sysadmins to delete users without
 having to consult with the client, I'd like to propose two solutions:

 1. WordPress disassociates user accounts from authorship information (like
 in the Automattic plugin [https://wordpress.org/plugins/co-authors-plus/
 co-authors-plus])
 2. WordPress allows deactivating user accounts so that the user can no
 longer login or reset their password, but the account still exists

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/38109>
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