I think you can do it now Rebecca. :)

When it's your own component you should able to delete it.

Have done this in the past myself since the component was no longer a contribute for the community.

Hi Rebecca,

Your idea is to Retire a component, not delete it. Is that it?

I can see a case for leaving a retired component visible (but perhaps no longer searchable) so that it serves as stepping stone for discovering 2. the functionality on the current platform or 3. the new component that offers that funcionality.
Beside that, deleting a component would wipe a community contribution and affect the owner's score/rank - which might come as a [bad] surprise.

Let me know if you meant "retire" = "delete". If so I'll mark the idea as implemented.

If users are following it then they would be confused as to what happened to it.  If its retired, we could redirect to a replacement component or they would be able to see it is retired.  I found this with my "Screen Helper" component...I have merged it with another component.

Perhaps a simple "deprecated by  XXX component" tag should be sufficient