How does one permanently close a GDnet account?
Also, if it is closed, when someone is browsing the forums and sees a thread I started or one I responded to, will they see something like:
Account Terminated says: blah blah blah
or will they see something like (if John was my username):
John says: blah blah blah
?
I don't think we've ever had formal account closure, nor is it clear what on earth that would accomplish. We can ban people, of course. I vaguely remember one or two occasions where somebody did not want their name or company attached to certain content and that was handled as a special case.
So since you are a mod, if I asked you, do you have the abilities to (and would you) close my account permanently, remove my profile, and delete my name from all content on this site?
Mods don't have that permission, except to ban accounts which is very different than neatly closing an account.
EDIT: It looks like we could also disable your ability to post without banning you. But again that is different than neatly closing up an account and removing all associated content.
As a policy all comments remain on the board. When individuals go through their entire post history and edit posts to things like "I hate everything!" or simply blank the pages, mods and staff will go back through all the posts and revert the formerly-useful posts so that others can learn and grow from the knowledge.
If this is a case of simply having made posts that you want to distance yourself from, the best solution is just time. The Internet never forgets. Even if we blanked out every reference to you on the site, there are many archives on the internet that will remember your posts forever.
This isn't a request we get very often, most people simply stop using an account if they no longer wish to participate for whatever reason.
We've had a couple of people in the past who felt the site was providing too great a distraction/time-sink, and that they lacked the will-power to simply stop visiting. In those cases moderators have simply suspended the account; temporarily in the case of someone who just wanted to get through an exam period un-distracted, and permanently in at least one other case I can recall.
If you actually want your details scrubbed, you'll need a member of staff to help you. I can only recall one prior instance of this being done, and in that case the actions taken were:
Note that as a regular user you can actually make the majority of these changes yourself. This would leave your posts intact but displaying a different obviously unusual username, and although the presence of quotes in any topics you've participated in may give away the previous username no other personal information would remain unless you happened to include something in a post body.
As a general rule, we don't allow the removal of post contents without a compelling reason to do so -- candidates for removal may include offensive materials, spam, or materials involved in a legal dispute -- as this is damaging to our community, and really isn't fair on other users. If you had one or more specific posts you wanted removed you could always ask and provide a reason you feel they should be removed, but the answer may well be "no". As noted above, there are also plenty of archive sites out there that we have no control over, and your content would generally remain accessible there anyway.
If you're just curious I hope that answers your question. If you're actually asking because you're considering closing your account, shoot me a private message -- but we'd be sad to see you go! 
