Over the last few days I have been actively participating in a thread on the General forum titled something like "Google.com good for stalkers" or something similar. There has been a lot of thoughtful, interesting discussion. Some of it was a bit heated, but there didn't seem to be any personal attacks or other Golden Rule violations that I was aware of, at least as of the last time I was able to check. There was one troll on the thread (who appears to have posted 58 times, yet only has 4 posts left visible), but people were either ignoring him, or responding constructively rather than flaming. Many people considered this thread to be a good public service announcement.
When I went to check on the state of the thread this afternoon, I couldn't find it anywhere, and I noticed that my posting history no longer lists my posts from this thread. I am forced to conclude that the entire thread was deleted.
I understand that being a moderator is a hard, underappreciated job, but I really feel like nuking this whole thread was a bad choice. A lot of people put a lot of thought and energy into what was generally a very fruitful discussion. I never saw anything that was worth reporting to the mods. Had I seen anything, I would have reported it as soon as I saw it, so the offending posts could be excised without removing the whole thread. I have been bitten in the past, where a thread I was participating in got removed because things got out of hand before the mods got involved. As nearly as I could tell, that wasn't the case, at least as of last night. And even if things got out of control in the last 12 hours, surely it would have been better to delete the offending posts of the last twelve hours rather than removing all the thought, emotion, and energy that people have been pouring into that thread over most of the last week.
Mods, please, please, please!!! think twice, or even three or four times before deleting an entire thread! This is not the first time I have been in a thread that got deleted by the mods. Each time it happens it is incredibly frustrating and annoying. I and others put a lot of time and thought into our posts, and it is very shocking for it to all disappear without a trace. When a thread is deleted, there isn't even a headstone left behind that says the thread once was there, or why it got deleted.
Was it something that I dismissed as unimportant that I should have reported to a mod? I don't know and have no way of knowing for future reference.
When I went to check on the state of the thread this afternoon, I couldn't find it anywhere, and I noticed that my posting history no longer lists my posts from this thread. I am forced to conclude that the entire thread was deleted.
I understand that being a moderator is a hard, underappreciated job, but I really feel like nuking this whole thread was a bad choice. A lot of people put a lot of thought and energy into what was generally a very fruitful discussion. I never saw anything that was worth reporting to the mods. Had I seen anything, I would have reported it as soon as I saw it, so the offending posts could be excised without removing the whole thread. I have been bitten in the past, where a thread I was participating in got removed because things got out of hand before the mods got involved. As nearly as I could tell, that wasn't the case, at least as of last night. And even if things got out of control in the last 12 hours, surely it would have been better to delete the offending posts of the last twelve hours rather than removing all the thought, emotion, and energy that people have been pouring into that thread over most of the last week.
Mods, please, please, please!!! think twice, or even three or four times before deleting an entire thread! This is not the first time I have been in a thread that got deleted by the mods. Each time it happens it is incredibly frustrating and annoying. I and others put a lot of time and thought into our posts, and it is very shocking for it to all disappear without a trace. When a thread is deleted, there isn't even a headstone left behind that says the thread once was there, or why it got deleted.
Was it something that I dismissed as unimportant that I should have reported to a mod? I don't know and have no way of knowing for future reference.