Search Before Posting New Threads, or Don't be Surprised if They're Merged

[Hacker James]

I have noticed a few threads no longer exist. Sometimes within hours or minutes even of their creation.  As far as I could tell, none contained any inappropriate material. I am only curious as to why or what criteria is used to eliminate certain posts.

[Mulligan Jeff]

Huh?

[Hacker James]

please disregard my post. I think it is adequately covered in the FAQ. I only made mention as I had seen a few posts and when I clicked on the subject line, it said something to the effect "The link to which you are referring no longer exists".  No biggie, the administrators/moderators have the right to do this if that is indeed what happened.

[tristanhilton85]

Usually they are spam posts or threads that get deleted...

[Shorty]

Originally Posted by tristanhilton85

Usually they are spam posts or threads that get deleted...

I always look forward to reading ones like

"Having you for in excellent to fashions"

[iacas]

Originally Posted by Hacker James

I have noticed a few threads no longer exist. Sometimes within hours or minutes even of their creation.  As far as I could tell, none contained any inappropriate material. I am only curious as to why or what criteria is used to eliminate certain posts.

We merged your thread into an existing thread. You should do a search before posting a new thread. Quite literally the ONLY posts deleted in the last month have been:

1. Spam
2. Duplicates/Triplicates
3. Responses in the few "no-response" threads we have here
4. Political posts in the one thread about Bubba

But thanks for the alarmist and inaccurate thread title (since changed to reflect the subject more accurately).

[MEfree]

Originally Posted by iacas

We merged your thread into an existing thread. You should do a search before posting a new thread. Quite literally the ONLY posts deleted in the last month have been:

Spam

Duplicates/Triplicates

Responses in the few "no-response" threads we have here

Political posts in the one thread about Bubba

But thanks for the alarmist and inaccurate thread title (since changed to reflect the subject more accurately).

In addition to having a few posts moved to another or new thread (when you deemed them off topic), I had a post deleted where I couldn't find a way to move the stuff I was writing out of a quote box from you.  I was on an i-pad and indicated that the first part was mine and the second part came from you, but the entire post got deleted.

Not sure if this was the case with this thread, but I have also seen some of my thread titles changed.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by MEfree

In addition to having a few posts moved to another or new thread (when you deemed them off topic), I had a post deleted where I couldn't find a way to move the stuff I was writing out of a quote box from you.  I was on an i-pad and indicated that the first part was mine and the second part came from you, but the entire post got deleted.

I specifically said within the last month, as I do not recall any of those being in the last month, but I could be wrong there. But a malformed post is not our fault - they take time to "fix" on our end, and if you care little enough to make a post that's properly formed, why should we? Just don't make malformed posts. This includes posting your reply inside someone else's quote block. You can't blame the moderators for that. You goofed, not us.

Originally Posted by MEfree

Not sure if this was the case with this thread, but I have also seen some of my thread titles changed.

Yes, as should be expected. I like good thread titles (you wouldn't believe how many thread titles we change to correct spelling mistakes and typos) because you can find them easily later, and because they show up better in search engines.

I'm all for hearing about how the moderation and so on can be improved, but I've also learned that perception by members is often very far apart from the reality. Simply put, many of you will never see the quite literally hundreds of times where we'll fix a small error in a malformed post, or where it's good to merge threads or move posts, or where we choose a better thread title. We'll do a thousand things right, or a thousand things you agree with, but when ONE of your posts is malformed and deleted because it'd take too long to fix, or you think your thread title was great but we change it, suddenly in your mind (generic "your" not just you MEfree) then it sticks out in your mind. And maybe you're right, and we were wrong in that instance, or maybe we're right and you just disagree.

Either way, I think we've got a pretty good average going on.

This site deletes fewer posts than any other site in the Huddler network. It bans fewer people (as a percentage of registrations) by tenfold over the next nearest site on the Huddler platform. We also do a great job, as a community and as a moderation team, of keeping things pretty nicely on topic (and the "community" part means many of you deserve credit for that as well), and so on.

So while I will gladly listen to ways in which moderation can be improved, I ask of you guys to remain realistic about how good it actually is here, and the things you can do to help, and to recognize when you screw something up (it happens - I've had to delete my own posts sometimes when I help something get too far OT - we all do it) that it probably isn't really our fault if your post is moved, merged, or even deleted.

And if anyone ever has a specific concern, or wants the reason, send myself or Mike a private message, ideally relatively quickly, and we can explain why something happened. But those things don't really "happen" all that frequently.

---

One common request is to notify people when we do something or take an action, but again the problem with that is that we can't do that because it'd take forever. Requests like that simply demonstrate how much "moderation" we do that goes completely un-noticed and unrecognized. We'd probably send out 15 PMs a day just saying "I fixed a typo in your thread title." So, as much as I agree that a PM would be nice, it's simply nowhere near feasible.