Avatar2go wrote:My last post in that thread was deleted. It pointed out that Fox had lied about the stolen election, and that Dominion was attempting to hold them accountable.
I don't think there is any political motivation on behalf of moderators here. But it does seem at times a bit random, as to what is allowed and what isn't. I thought my post was truthful and on topic. It didn't attack anyone other than Fox, but did so factually. So was surprised to see it deleted.
I do understand that the overhead of moderating a contentious thread might warrant locking it. And maybe it's necessary to delete a block of posts referring to a specific problematic post, so perhaps my post was caught up in that.
The only thing I would point out, is that the net effect is that people making extreme assertions will generate a vigorous response, and if the thread is locked because of that, the persons doing so have outsized control over the topic. That is the only real concern I have. I think that is frustrating for some of us.
Just my opinion, for what it's worth.
Most deletions are for referenced post deletions (as you've suggested). If one post breaks the rules and requires deletion, then any subsequent reply that quotes it has to be removed to get rid of the offending comment. With our policies, we don't have any discretion on that, and we aren't permitted to edit posts to remove deleted reference posts so that the reply can stand. Unfortunately those users sometimes get upset thinking they've done something wrong, when in reality it's just collateral damage. It's never personal for us, and for me personally, it feels lousy having to delete a whole string of posts because of one bad post. I've been a user on here for more than a decade, and I know that it doesn't feel good to put in effort on a reply to see it disappear. It isn't what we want, but sometimes we don't have a choice, since ultimately our role here is to follow the rules and ensure the rules are followed.
I understand your concern about one or two individuals having an outsized role. We usually try to step in with other moderating tools to prevent that sort of thing (warnings or bans). Frankly, we'll go through a lot more effort to utilize those tools to keep a thread alive in an aviation topic as opposed to a politically charged Non Av topic. Once a thread like that goes off the rails, it rarely gets back on track regardless of what we do.