title: Rails: Delete User without losing associations (or other methods of letting Users leave)
body: <p>I have a Rails application that lets Users create various "judgements", everything is a bit interweaved, we have several classes that are connected to the User class.</p>
  
  <p>When I let users "destroy" their account, obviously the associations they had will give me a <code>nil</code> object. So, for example, when I traverse all judgements, I can't get the user that created the judgement if this particular user deleted (destroyed) their account.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>What are the best practices in Rails for such cases?</li>
  <li>Is it considered okay to flag a user as inactive, but still keep their account?</li>
  <li>Could I delete the User account and replace the associated information in other classes?</li>
  </ul>