First up, I am not complaining about moderation here (although I do find it a bit arbitrary) - but I have noticed a few times, including the last couple of days, that I return to a thread to find the post I spent ages compiling the day before has simply vanished.

This can be very frustrating - especially when I can think of no reason for it being moderated - and the feeling of victimisation can not help with the generally febrile atmosphere among users of this board.

Therefore, I ask: would it be possible for a system to be put in place so that moderated posts are visible, along with a reason for deletion, in e.g. the user's notification area. At least that way it would be possible to see why things were removed and allow us to use the "good bits" of our comment in a new post, taking the moderation into account.

That would be much better than the anger I get at feeling a) I've had my time and input wasted, b) I've been arbitrarily thrown out of a discussion I was part of, c) I'm being ignored or even victimised by the board

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

First up, I am not complaining about moderation here (although I do find it a bit arbitrary) - but I have noticed a few times, including the last couple of days, that I return to a thread to find the post I spent ages compiling the day before has simply vanished.

This can be very frustrating - especially when I can think of no reason for it being moderated - and the feeling of victimisation can not help with the generally febrile atmosphere among users of this board.

Therefore, I ask: would it be possible for a system to be put in place so that moderated posts are visible, along with a reason for deletion, in e.g. the user's notification area. At least that way it would be possible to see why things were removed and allow us to use the "good bits" of our comment in a new post, taking the moderation into account.

That would be much better than the anger I get at feeling a) I've had my time and input wasted, b) I've been arbitrarily thrown out of a discussion I was part of, c) I'm being ignored or even victimised by the board

More than likely, your posts were removed for referencing a deleted post. We realize that it's frustrating, but our policies require us to remove all referenced posts. My preference would be for us to have discretion on removing referenced quote content, leaving the remainder of the comment intact (assuming it's on topic and follows the rules), but that's not currently part of the policy we're required to follow. It's something I would like to change, but it isn't my decision.

If you notice your posts missing, you can always contact us at [email protected] to ask why. I am personally happy to send you the content of your post for you to repost if it was due to a referenced post deletion.

I wouldn't count on any sort of website changes — that simply isn't going to happen. We thought we were close to getting deletion notifications again (like the old site) about two and a half years ago, and then it just never happened. It's been so long that we've given up asking. We don't have the time or resources to manually notify everyone, so unfortunately disappearing posts is our current reality. That's how most forums work, but obviously many users got used to deletion notifications (which was a unique feature of the old site), so the expectations here are different. We openly acknowledge that the current system of users having to contact us to ask about deletions sucks, but we don't have a better option unless the developers create a better option for us.

atcsundevil wrote:

More than likely, your posts were removed for referencing a deleted post.

I suspected the same, but it still stings a bit when it happens...

We realize that it's frustrating, but our policies require us to remove all referenced posts. My preference would be for us to have discretion on removing referenced quote content, leaving the remainder of the comment intact (assuming it's on topic and follows the rules), but that's not currently part of the policy we're required to follow. It's something I would like to change, but it isn't my decision.

On all the other forums I know, the offending post is replaced by a "this post was deleted by moderators" type message so it's at least clear what happened. When you see a slew of deletions in a thread it's obvious that someone set off a flame war or something - and at least you can identify where it started and stopped.

Thanks for your reponse, and thanks for the offer to retrieve the missing post, but it's not that important.

SomebodyInTLS wrote:

atcsundevil wrote:

More than likely, your posts were removed for referencing a deleted post.

I suspected the same, but it still stings a bit when it happens...

We realize that it's frustrating, but our policies require us to remove all referenced posts. My preference would be for us to have discretion on removing referenced quote content, leaving the remainder of the comment intact (assuming it's on topic and follows the rules), but that's not currently part of the policy we're required to follow. It's something I would like to change, but it isn't my decision.

On all the other forums I know, the offending post is replaced by a "this post was deleted by moderators" type message so it's at least clear what happened. When you see a slew of deletions in a thread it's obvious that someone set off a flame war or something - and at least you can identify where it started and stopped.

Thanks for your reponse, and thanks for the offer to retrieve the missing post, but it's not that important.

I will add that back in the day I moderated a site that would show that a post was deleted by moderators. The problem? It required the moderators to edit the post to reflect that. It wasn't system generated and you lost the underlying post and no one who looked back would have any idea what was there. At least this way the moderators and admins can see what the offending post was. Also, there are threads were if we would have a "deleted by moderators" tag where you would end up with nothing but 3 pages of posts that say we deleted it. That would also detract from the user experience. It'll never be perfect, but we as a team are trying our best with the limited tools that we have.