Not possible to delete user with comments

Summary

Before JIRA 6.1, only reporter or assignee would block removal of a user. In JIRA 6.1 and above, the delete user validation has been extended to check on the user's comment on issues. While this prevents orphaned comments in JIRA, it also prevents JIRA Administrators from deleting JIRA User accounts which are no longer needed.

However, there is no way to unlink user's comment from every issue automatically and the only way to delete a user who has made comments, is to delete the comments. This process is very difficult without making unsupported changes in the JIRA database.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Log in as a JIRA Administrator
2. Attempt to delete a user with comments from Admin Cog > User Management
3. Observe Error showing user has existing comments.
4. Unable to delete user until the comments for the user do not exist.

Expected Results

There should at least be some method to 'tidy' up the Users in JIRA, otherwise as JIRA Instances age they will develop long lists of Inactive Users.

Actual Results

No easy way in JIRA to delete users, or tidy up the list of Users in JIRA.

Notes

Potentially,

• a tab could be used to shuffle off inactive users into a different User Interface?
• Have a way to make the user 'Invisible' in JIRA with a flag.

Workaround

Deactivate the user instead