We probably should handle this the same way as we handle site deletion since 
recently. 
Thus, users generally should be able to delete their account including all 
stories, files 
etc. from within their profile.

For this generic approach we need soft-comment deletion first, anyway.

I don't think it would be a good idea to offer the option to delete the username
including all postings, images etc in the user profile. 

I just had a look at the last 20 or so requests (at blogger.de) and found out 
that
~90% of the users asking for their name to be deleted did not have any posting 
except
the request to delete their name, so the restriction to users who have no
story/comment (and reference to photo/file) in the DB would allow almost all 
people
wanting to get rid of an accout to delete it themselves. 

At the same time, people who would delete all of their comments just because 
they can
and don't care any more wouldn't be helped vandalizing threads. (Soft deletion 
or
not, deleted comments are always a nuisance when one happens to read 
conversations.) 

Whoever *really* wants his comments deleted can do so anyway, one after 
another, but
I think that shouldn't be made too easy. 

(If I could - or had to - choose between the status quo and users being able to
delete all of their contributions with a few clicks, I would choose keeping the
status quo.)

Although I would prefer to keep the user’s in control – I think it is a 
very good thing 
to be able to autonomously remove my content from a website (I wish I could do 
that 
on Facebook!) and if we provide a feature to delete a user profile it should be 
available for everyone – we could allow this only for “empty” profiles, 
of course.

Are you convinced that people will remove their profiles with levity, 
especially if they 
have some bigger collections of stories and comments?

Don’t get me wrong: I do see the problem, comments and images suddenly 
disappearing and so on. However, I woud prefer to know that everyone is 
responsible 
for her content than to be called as superuser to do the job. I think it’s 
the right way 
to do it, and the trade-off is acceptable.