Best practices for data deletion on user account termination

Question

On a site that has a fair share of user-generated content such as forum threads, blog comments, submitted articles, private and public messaging, user profiles, etc; what is the

Answer 1

I've been thinking about these same issues for quite some time. Honestly you shouldn't delete a thread started by a user-to-be-deleted if the other people have contributed their time and efforts to it. I remember on one forum there was a rule you can't delete your thread after somewhat 11 hours after it's been published. I guess the idea behind is that you can't take your word back after you've pronounced it.

So, better lock account but don't cascade-delete anything in relation to user.

Especially, so that they can delete their account, then register under the same name and start it all over again.