Okay … Stopy it. You’re getting personal. Both of you.
On the topic I also do agree that Blende rshould …
a) … not call the datablocks ‘Fake User’ but more descriptive to the outside.
b) … turn on autosave for most users depending on data. Set Presets in the options (‘strict’, ‘gefault’, ‘save all (not recommended)’)
c) … implements an auto-purge manager at some point
If we get a more solid rework: Cool. Long overdue and appreciated. Until then or maybe even never not deleting attributional data is just necessary.
I actually can see that the datamanagement aspect of it is important and that autopurging does make a difference. And despite vehemently disagreeing with @1D_Inc I will actually make a point for his usual reasoning.
When unassigning data that is not needed any more it needs to get marked as “not used” because there is no easy way to access it afterwards. So it would stay in the file unnoticed to most because they never learned about the fake user system. And from there on out it will bloat the file. That is just true and we all know it.
It still leads to a false solution. Important data is perceived as unnecessary because it is not treated that way. The data is inaccessible and difficult to manage because Blender evolved that way and this is one of the areas that got dragged through over the last 15+ years without many improvements.
Neither does Blender have a material library/editor that works independent of models in the scene nor does it have a real and dedicated central place for all the other Datablocks in the file to be managed and sifted through. And I mean - a workspace that is meant for management. Not just observation with minor managing functionality like the Blender file browser currently is.
Some Data simply is still important data even though it may be invisible at the moment. There is a distinction. Why are meshes preceived as gone after deleting from the scene? Because the file managment browser is the prominant and direct way to work with them. BEcause we assume them to be gone from the root of the scene. They are the star of the show and when they are gone we want them gone. We see them in the outliner and even if they are hidden or temporaily disabled as a collection we still know they are there because they are logically treated as such.
Consequently as soon as we delete an object from the outliner we also percieve it gone. We intuitively accept that data as gone. And it should be. Despite Blender still keeping the datablock in memory for now. It’s a dead mesh walking unless the user seriously wants it otherwise.
With other data there is a dissonance. My two favorite examples are animations and Materials. Neither of these has a true dedicated editor yet to most people working with 3D software of any kind both of these are logically percieved as “something I create as an attribute or a library for later to apply and mix and match” because they are. Animations can be used as clips for characters even if not currently needed. They can be exported to game engines - despite not being used on any mesh in the scene. They are f’in important!! (yes - I lost data like this). Materials are attributes. They are libraries that can be applied to objects later on. Even if there are no objects currently in the scene. They are fuctional blocks.
Deleting this kind of Data is simply not right. No matter how you turn it. The most important aspect of this whole discussion is the definition of which data should be treated as important. And I think the most important thread in this regard is this one:
because this is the discussion of what data is actually currently percieved less important than it should be.
As a sencondary step if the devs or anyone fro the community wants to there should be a discussion about better Library management for this data as well. But maybe the asset browser will evolve to get this functionality or become a deidacted separate workspace for the current file. This is a different discussion. Important - but not right here or now.