Does anyone else feel a little aggrieved when a swathe of posts are deleted on a topic they may have been interested in following? Especially after having been sent multiple email notifications?
I do know that different site owners do things differently, but HoL is starting to lean towards the more delete-button-happy end of the spectrum at the moment and I was wondering why this is. I should add that I don't know whether its admins or members doing most of the deleting (there is not 'user deleted' or 'admin deleted' notification as on some boards) - but it seems to be happening a lot!
I wouldn't want things to go too far the other way - I'm a member of another com where members aren't allowed to delete their own comments and are threatened with bans and slaps on the wrist if they do (VERY controlling!) but equally I find it frustrating when I click on to six comments via my email and find that all of them have gone.
Is there room for perhaps offering an explanation as to why things have been deleted or summarising the removed thread so we're not left making assumptions as to the reason?
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I think the Admins post explanation when they have to delete items. Other deletions will be by the originators.
I deleted one of mine recently because some people found it offensive.
*nod* I think it's important to be able to do it. Just wondering why it seems to be happening so much at the moment.
Good if admins have a policy of explaining their reasoning though. That said, the one time I had a reply deleted there was no explanation given and I wasn't notified personally either...
Were there but world enough and time, I'm sure many many things could be done better and I'd be at the front of the queue to point them out. The best way to start improving things is for us to institute a weekly charge to fund more admin time. Let us know how much would you be prepared to pay and we can get the pay wall set up?
You're wrong about which way we're leaning. We've had the same policy since 2008. Very few posts get deleted. Those that do are generally deleted because they expose us to legal threat; a few because they're out of line with other policies. Believe me, this is one of those cases where we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
*nod* good to know, thanks. I know people won't be happy whatever approach you take (and I do prefer your approach to that of many others), but this was just a hunch based on recent experience.
What also happens if someone deletes a post is that all replies to that post are also deleted, unless the poster ticks a box to tell the platform not to do that. As John says, if a post is deleted or moved by site admin then there should be an explanation left in its place as to what about the post infringed our terms and conditions.
For some people, their response to a post that garners a lot of negative responses is to remove it, resulting in the loss of the responses too. That is entirely their right. As a non-moderated site (meaning we don't read all posts before they are published), people have a responsibility to manage their own input and make decisions about what they posts they want to remove.
Ahh, I did wonder about that.
Interesting that you say it's their 'right' to delete their own comments. Do you happen to know if that stands up legally, because if so I will take that information to this other com I'm a member of, because their hardcore 'no delete' policy has wound me up for years!
I don't know what the legal standpoint of that is (maybe a passing lawyer could tell us), but if you are publishing on a non-moderated site, then it's surely like managing your own blog or twitter stream etc in that ultimately you should have control over what posts you want found. Some people post in haste and take things down because the re-think their actions, others dislike the hassle of negativity and remove posts to stop being the centre of the conversation. It seems unusually harsh to hold people to every word they've ever written but then maybe it could make you more careful before pressing the send button.
Yup, I was always uncomfortable with it for these exact reasons. I suspect it's generally more likely to go in favour of site owners though.
Most message boards (I'm not sure about this one) have in their T&Cs that any post becomes their property and so generally you wouldn't have any right to delete posts later on
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