This is just an honest question to inquire whether there is an overall policy or moderator guideline for the deletion of whole posts and/or threads.

My understanding so far had been that this only happened in cases where the post or thread was so offensive that it could not be left standing.

However, recently, we have seen some threads disappear completely without any explanation whatsoever.

Some examples:

1) doc's thread with suggestions for moderator guidelines (while the other thread mocking it stayed visible!)

2) Some of the threads doc started in the Travel technology forum (for which he was subsequently banned)

3) Patron's thread in this forum in which he tried to raise some questions for discussion.

Some of these threads had evolved into a heated discussion, or might have. Some others have not, yet they were deleted without public explanation. I believe an explanation to the thread starters might have or might not have been given by the moderator.

But as a general question:

What is the policy?

And here my opinion on it (yeah, sorry ) :

It is confusing and makes things very intransparent if a thread just gets completely deleted without any explanation. Locking threads is one thing, but just completely deleting them - if they are not highly offensive - is not a good way of doing things, in my opinion.

It makes it confusing to follow, and it makes the original poster look very bad, because it appears to those who saw the original thread that he must have done something very offensive, even if that is not the case.

Also, what is the policy on moderators deleting threads of other moderators? Is that considered standard policy?

Sorry for starting yet another thread, and thanks for your attention.

I agree some threads have been darn near impossible to follow here. Even Randy today seems to be finding it hard to make head nor tail of some of them.

Here is one below that also perplexed me for a different reason.

A few posts from a thread taken out a week or so after the initial post was made here, and deemed by the moderator to be a 'new thread' and posted here thus:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=363095

I could be wrong but in my 4� years on FT I have not seen this done before.

I guess it boosts the thread numbers if nothing else.

However are we in future likely to see a post #21 on a thread given an arbitrary title by a mod a week after we make it, and become the "starter" of a thread we did not start or wish to start?

If it is a brand new FT policy, fine, but it does not seem to prevail outside this forum, hence my query.

I would like to see an answer on this too and considered starting a thread similar to this one yesterday.

In agreement with the above, yesterday it seemed that hitting the reload button every few seconds/minutes was the only way to actually follow what was going on in some threads. Perhaps I should write a script to do so. Right now I'm doing "open in a new tab" for all new looks at a thread lest something disappear.

It is also extremely confusing that when a post is deleted, the post #'s within a thread reset such that the original post never existed. At one point I wanted to go back to post X in a thread only to find out that post X was now a different post. At least maybe a placeholder post should stay when a post in the middle of a long thread is to be deleted, e.g. the moderator deletes all the content but leaves the poster, the post number, and the empty post, with the reason given as "deleted by moderator."

Then there are the appearing/reappearing threads which makes me wonder what is going on in other forums. Before wandering over here to see what was going on before the posts started vanishing, I was trying to find a thread in TSS (it was on-topic) that I thought I remembered from a few days ago, as I wanted to reply. But I can't seem to find it. Now I wonder if I'm just absent-minded, sloppy in my search, or if the thread actually existed and went bye-bye.

I've come into threads with sections deleted, but I'm a naive person by nature and just assume that the moderators had their reasons and since other moderators, the FlyerTalk Administraors, and Randy himself can still see them, if there were any "smoking guns" being "covered up", one of them would open it back up or comment on it.

If you really are worried that your not seeing every single post on FlyerTalk in every single forum the moment they are made, perhaps you should develop, or fund the development of, a web crawler or something that constantly copies every new post/thread in FT and sends it to you so you have a record...

Or maybe pay a bunch of people to just print out every page of FT on a moment-by-moment basis so you have a hard-copy...

I just now had a thread deleted on me in this forum. I will say that, while I disagree strongly with its removal, the moderator involved did inform me of the deletion by PM along with the reasons.

I had completely missed this little gem in the other thread - how come the moderator did not delete it, as he did with some other posts? Just goes to prove my point - personal attacks, completely incorrect presentation of facts, nobody seems to have a problem with it?! wharvey, is it consistent that you delete some other posts, but leave this personal attack and these lies up there?

A search just turned up that I am apparently finishing my posting here with 83 (now 84) posts on the Only Randy Petersen forum, and 20 on the TalkBoard forum (to be honest, I thought it would have been more).

That's 104 out of almost 2,600. Last I checked, this is about 5 %, not 50 % (not sure how those which were deleted by a moderator count!!! But until recently, those were not many)...

Maybe, but it is the truth.

Appears that Dan might not be in the office anymore, so I'll be available to correct further incorrect statements until he gets around to unregistering me!

A good point to be clarified. I am just curious in case I should ever inadvertently commit the same TOS breach - i.e. knowing on what basis and how often posting to a number of threads in a Forum breaches the TOS? Is 8 too many? Or 11 or 14? I hope someone can offer some advice.


Out of curiosity I've done some simple checks as suggested via search and if these comments were made by ScottC they simply are not true by any reading, and anyone here can readily confirm that by doing the same simple search.

doc was a regular poster there in that forum for quite some time - as indeed he was in nearly all FT forums. WAY before you or anyone else was a moderator there. Getting to 40,000 posts proves that.

The rapidly locked with no reason given, and then somewhat later purged, dozen or so threads all appeared to me FAR more pertinent to the Travel Technology forum guidelines than these current ones below, which appear not in the right place at all by your own spelt out guidelines:

'Hotmail message sort ?'

'Any GMail Invites left?'

'Paypal Problems?'

'Low Tech: anyone own luggage made from Dukktex?'

The four above were of course NOT posted by doc and there have been AFAIK no objections made, no warnings, threats, or edits or bans made, and they have not yet been locked or purged from the boards. Mods call entirely to lock, delete and move what they want, but I am just curious on how someone wanting to pay someone money on Ebay via PayPal does not get also locked immediately as being totally off-topic on the day all the others were zapped?

doc's ban was total news to Randy it seems clear from his posts, but of course he does not have to approve these bans it now appears. The decision is made, and Randy appears to be comfortable with it based on what he has seen of the background and life goes on.

Just be useful to learn if there IS an actual maximum number of threads one is now allowed to post to, and for that to be clarified, so that posting "outside the spirit of the TOS" is not breached as seems to have been the 'crime' here.

ScottC, one of the moderators of the forum in question, had recently posted in
this thread (which he later derailed, with my help ) that he does not think a rule for a limit on thread starts (at least by new members) was necessary...maybe he changed his mind overnight?

That is interesting attorney28.

The handful of threads locked and later deleted were of course not all new threads from what I saw. Some had several members posting on them, all civil, all with no apparent rancor or abuse or flames. Just 'Travel and Technology' seemed to be the content.

I gathered the offence was posting to threads as well, not starting them. Even when posting on topic of the thread, and on threads in the correct forum.

But I could be way wrong there. I just looked at the 10 or so that were locked with no reason given and was rather surprised to see that.

There may be a new designated figure of how many a day we are individually allowed to post to - Randy might perhaps clarify that if he has time, as the muddy line on that seems very muddy to me lately.

I wish to apologize to you. the reference to 50% reflected your most recent 200 posts on FT, not your lifetime record. That includes that abnormally high number of posts made on the locked thread which I had referenced where you were indeed repeating yourself in many different ways but the message was always the same. That sir, combined with your previous posts in both the ORP & TB boards on the same exact theme does indeed fit the definition of spamming. Therefore it is merely a statement of fact and not a personal attack.

It is obvious that I have been rather passionate about the topic.

Apologies for making a lot of posts then.

But often, when one starts a thread that one cares about, and then people come in and post something, one feels compelled to respond to those posts.

I think it is not all that unusual that the thread starter ends up being the person with the most posts in his own thread.

Is calling someone a "filibuster" a personal attack? Wrapping it in "some people would call it..." does not change anything about that.

It is not a personal attack but just an observation. Does that make me a member of the clique?

It looks to me that 99.96% of the people that frequent FT never seem to have a problem with the moderators or moderation. I'd be hard pressed to tell who exactly is a moderator in the forums I frequent, and I used to be a moderator!

Equally amazing to me that the .04% that do seem to have problem never seem to get tired of arguing about it.

I don't know, so far I did not have you on my radar as a member of that clique, but one of the main characteristics of that clique is that they are very good at lobbying behind the scenes against posters they do not like, so perhaps you have been influenced strongly.

In any case, you are certainly entitled to your opinion about me, even if it happens to be very negative . Not very relevant anyway, as I am just curious if I will still get to 2,600 before Dan gets to work...

One would think that if one were intent on "resigning" from FT, he'd simply resign and walk away...

Not an attack, just an observation.