Devastating? Jeez.

If you want to make a code change proposal, go ahead and make one. Otherwise, deletion is a feature offered to Lemmy users to use as they see fit. In fact some earlier (unrelated) proposals to speed up the software were rejected on the grounds that deletion is required to actually scrub the entry from the database, rather than simply making it inaccessible through the web. The scrubbing requirement may have been abandoned by now though.

I half remember a Lemmy client (Voyager Jerboa?) with a user setting to automatically delete any post or comment that the user makes after 7 days or something. It had nothing to do with karma. I didn't use that setting but it seemed reasonable to me. Lemmy is a discussion forum not a long term archive.

I do like the idea of adding a wiki feature to Lemmy, to hold info of long term value to a community. Reddit already has something like that.**