I think it’s basically impossible for someone, espeically a high volume user, to delete their account without knowing how much doing so would affect iNat overall. In at least some of the cases where this has happened, they’ve clearly done it out of spite or in a fit of anger. I’d be for giving someone a cooling off option or keep their data for 30 days like Facebook does, in case they change their minds. But preventing someone from deleting their iNat contributions is not something we’ll do.
Previous discussion: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/dealing-with-account-deletion/93 Looks like there I said we’d work on an anonymization option but we haven’t done so and, the more I think about it the less I’d be for it.