Curious about deleted posts
6I was wondering how meh makes the determination to delete a post. As I have gone through the threads today, I have seen a few mentions of deleted posts and was just curious as to what you could say that would get you deleted.
As many of you know I am a pretty easy going guy, not trying to stir anything up, just curious.
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BTW, I wanted to see how creepy that GIF looked in the little bubble next to my question, haha.
@conandlibrarian I thought to ask this question but was too afraid of the hoopla it might create. Thanks!
@conandlibrarian It looks plenty creepy. @conandlibrarian wants to finger us. Watch out, @marklog.
@joelmw i love what time does to cultural phenomenons. Apparently it is me who gets fingered, now?
@marklog It is a curious thing indeed. That's such a fun word too, with some reach in its implications.
@marklog I didn't originally mean that ("reach") pun, but let's pretend that I did. Subconsciously perhaps.
For the most part, I much prefer to lock comments, topics, replies rather than delete them. (Well, I actually prefer to not do anything if possible, but you probably knew that.)
I (and the others helping with the community here) delete posts when it seems clear that its existence on the forum/topic is continuing to cause trouble or just generally make the community worse. Oh, and also when it's just near-automated spam that no one wants to see.
Just to be clear, this is really rare - we've probably deleted a single-digit number of comments that aren't just total spam in the last year.
@dave way to beat me to the punch and be all wordy
For those curious @dave is my sounding board and guideline for comment removal, or thread locking that isn't spam.
@MEHcus Well, you could have deleted his post and said it yourself!
It's got to be pretty offensive or a personal attack for it to be deleted for the most part but it's completely subjective.
@MEHcus Yep. Twisted was pretty offensive way back when.
@lisaviolet I don't think we actually deleted any of those posts though, but it's been a while so I can't remember for sure. What a fun way to spend Thanksgiving that was....
@MEHcus Oh, yeah, at least one was removed. The one where the Twisted one called me a name that rhymes with runt. I ran off in search of a great GIF response, but when I came back to share it, the post was gone.
Thanks gents!
Thanks everyone! I was really curious about it.
@conandlibrarian We had a business model idea a year or two ago of creating a community with forums that auto-scanned for and started threads from deleted posts of famous message boards. Basically a forum with bot-posted threads documenting post deletion on the internet that was open to ongoing discussion of why these posts were deleted and if it was something sensational/dramatic going on that might be joined in on.
The extended idea would be that knowing this existed, a famous-forum user could then reference and link over to this external forum to carry on a discussion that the moderators of a particular local forum were trying to stop. Obviously at some point the link-backs might be deleted as subversive themselves but perhaps a clever name for this community would help it become universally known and less reliant on link-backs...
Sadly we probably killed our momentum for this idea out of the gates by registering the URL "modnazi .com" thinking it was the clever name we wanted. (only the next day realizing this looked like some sort of racist moderate-nazi club website name vs the moderator-nazi meme we were aiming for) We can't wait until our registration expires!
Maybe someday later we'll take this up again but I thought it was relevant to share to strengthen our stated philosophy against deleting posts that have credible discontent / statement value.
@snapster That is so interesting. You all think of the most creative stuff!
@snapster - That forum, under that name could have been known as Gonzo Community - creating the meme and then amplifying the drama. Please let us know if/when you go there.
Alright everybody, let's brainstorm ideas for @snapster and come up with something memorable but not Nazi-related!
@snapster Reminds me of this poor guy.
@snapster you could make millions selling that URL to the Trump campaign staff
@snapster Your registrar probably offers an option of canceling or dropping the domain. You won't get refunded but oh well.
This morning I requested a reply in another thread to be removed. I did this because it was hateful, hurtful, racist and contributed absolutely nothing of value to the topic, or the forum as a whole.
I was happy to see the comment in question was dealt with appropriately.
@ruouttaurmind I'm glad you asked for that comment (I saw it) to be deleted. I'm also glad that you didn't ask for me to be deleted when you thought I was a bot.
@Barney You were always funny even when it wasn't clear if you were a bot or not. You put a lot of effort into being everywhere, and popping up every time a color was mentioned.
@dashcloud Aww... Much simpler times then, fewer mehmbers, thus fewer posts to follow. Good times!
@Barney Because I was satisfied you were a benevloent bot! A deliciously purple benevolent bot.
@ruouttaurmind Haha, love that gif!