FWIW, 48 out of 460 posts have been deleted from that thread.

Holy wall of text batman.

Your butt is hurt, I delete anything flippantly or disrespectfully, and if I didn't delete something you think deserved to be deleted, maybe you should, IDK, report the offensive post? Your posts were inappropriate in that they appeared to be attempts to initiate off-topic conversations, so I deleted them. It happens all the time - you really, REALLY aren't special in either your posts or the fact that they were deleted - and since the thread had been problematic the day before I essentially made a post that asked people to stay on topic and take personal conversations that weren't related to the topic to PM.

That's it. End of story.

If you felt or feel disrespected, sorry, but that's your own damn problem. I don't spend 18 hours a day on here. And you aren't special. You aren't special because your posts got deleted. You aren't special because you didn't get a PM. I literally gave ZERO thought to you or your feelings, because the deletion was completely standard.

Grow up and get over yourself. The fact that you produced that long of a diatribe over two deleted posts indicates that a) yes, LOL, you are butthurt, and that's really ****ing funny and b) NVG is probably too harsh for your delicate little sensibilities.

So it's kind of up to you if you want to keep whining about mods deleting your posts (and it will happen, and not just me) without a full explanation to soothe your ruffled feathers, or if you'd like to develop just a SLIGHTLY thicker skin and realize that there was absolutely nothing personal.

You can feel free to write a novel in response to this, if you like, but I won't be bothering to respond. I explained that neither the deletion nor the lack of a PM was personal or extraordinary, but you'll believe what you want to believe. Good luck with your future posting endeavors.

Edit: Also, your "you're a mod, you don't know how it FEEEEEEEEEELLLLLSSSSSSSSSS" rant is really quite hysterical. I'm going to let you try to figure that one out on your own, though, since I think the learning experience will do you some good.

Yeah, but i bet the other 45 or so were more warranted than mine. As i didn't do anything really. I bet 43 were thegreasefire(pokerbob) calling someone a f'king idiot or ******, and 2 other miscellaneous trolls saying FUFUFUFUFFU LALALALLAALA. But that is a decent amount of deletes, maybe they could be overdeleting?

I'm not saying Rgt was out of line the way she handled it. And i'm not upset, all i'm trying to say is some mods are quick on the trigger to delete posts. And if they're gonna be quick on the trigger they should imo have to post a pm to the deleted. Maybe they wouldn't be so quick on the trigger if they then had to do more work pm'ing. And only delete posts that are out of line. I mean its a forum, posters should have some leeway on what they say, and not have to fear deletions and infractions on the littlest comments/infractions made. Imo mods should be only getting involved if they see something get out of hand, racist comments, slander, and seriously vulgar comments. But some mods start becoming traffic cops and hall monitors which irritates alot of posters.

And like i said Rgt i'm not saying you are one of these mods i'm referring to. As this is the only incdident ive had with you. It just inspired me to discuss this topic that's irked me for a long time.

But its all good, just wanted to put in my 2 cents. Thanks for listening!

LOL!!! I didn't see this as i was posting my last post. I tried to explain i wasn't angry with you or butt hurt. I was trying to explain why you having a quick trigger to delete posts so flippantly and not give a pm pisses posters off. And you confirmed my suspicions here that you don't care to respect the posters. You just do whatever and feel noone deserves your time for an explanation.

You gave a diatribe to me so i had to respond with a diatribe to answer all your questions.

You say its not personal yet you now tell me to "grow up" tell me i have "delicate sensibilities" and call me stupid saying "the learning will do me some good". I wasn't making it personal before, but now it is thanks to you! Is that what a mod is supposed to do? Incite fight on 2+2 but insulting the posters when i never said one insulting thing about you? Did i call you a p ussy like you called me? Did i call you immature or stupid? NO!!!!!!! Yet you felt the need to do to me. We know this won't happen but why won't your post be deleted and YOU GET sent an infraction? You are out of line. Who the F do you think you are? I won't stoop down to your level and call you stupid, and there would be no need as some things are obvious and don't need to be said.

Of course you won't bother to respond, because that's what you do right? You delete posts without bothering to inform anyone. You are a lazy mod. Oh i'll just delete delete delete and f me doing any work to inform anyone whwhwheheeeeeee fun. That's the problem posters have with mods. Alot of them are on power trips and think they can talk to us any way they want just like you did to me here. As you know nothing will happen to you. They are disrespectful and rude. How would you feel if anyone talked to you that way? You wouldn't like it would you? You owed me an apology, but i know i'll never get one. As you only want to see things through your foggy eyes. I was never going off on you in my posts until now. But yet you felt the need to rip me a new one. Thanks! I appreciate that. You are fine decent human being. Just what a 2+2 mod should be.

Yeah i know to be a mod you had to be a reg poster before. But for some of you its been a long time since then and you don't know what the other side is like anymore. You sit there on your power trips insulting/deleting/infractioning whoever you want and know nothing will happen to you. Admit it, you get off on the power!

p.s. somehow you'll say this is my fault and make it look like i called you names and mocked you. While the truth is you are the only one doing the insulting and mocking til now. And how dare you to tell me to grow up, who the f are u? I'd say say it to my face but i know you're a girl. Girls get to talk big as they know boys won't fight them, just like mods. You are a double threat. not saying i'd fight you if you are a man either. As i'm an adult, not an immature person such as yourself, which you proved with this latest post.

I didn't want to get into a personal argument but you incited/baited me with that last post calling me stupid, immature, and dumb. I hope it at least made you feel better about yourself! And you aren't special either honey, even with that green color.

It just seems like this is never going to get through - mods having to PM someone every time they need to delete a post is never going to happen. Mods aren't lazy for not doing so; it's actually a very unreasonable expectation. I understand why it would be optimal, but unfortunately it's just not realistic.

And wow, have you guys ever taken an issue of a couple of deleted posts and made it into a HUGE issue.

Translation: WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Also I like how you include a bunch of words I used to insult you (like pussy, stupid and immature) that I didnt actually use at all. Nice touch. But thank you, I now have a crystal clear understanding of why the deletion of your posts caused you so much turmoil. You assume the worst of everyone but yourself.

Have fun out there and try to understand that when your post disappears, it's not personal.

She made it a huge issue with her personal insults to me. As i said i wasn't mad at her before the last post with her insults. The original deletes weren't a big deal. It just inspired me to look into this thread and make a post about trigger-happy power-tripping mods. But she made it something different now trying to shame me in her latest post.

I wish more mods were like you. You seem much more respectful than rgt and others. There wouldn't be so much fighting if people could discuss things without calling each other names, to have mods act like adults. How old is she 12?

Anyway i get your point that its alot of work to pm everyone. i guess all i expect is some common courtesy from mods when they delete our posts, and by trying to ask for it here i get another mod do the opposite of common courtesy.

Post 27 is hot.

Jesus, I hate coming to ATF and get hooked by these horrible threads. And by horrible, I mean, every post in it.

Who the **** doesn't spend 18 hours a day here

i managed to avoid reading all those WOTs of STG RJ and fishboy but I think cliffs for this thread go like this

- posters want to be informed when a thread get deleted
- mods cannot pm every single poster for every single post they delete
- mods think users should pm mods if they want to have an explanation
- posters don't necessarily know which mod deleted a post
- mods can see explanations if a post got deleted (and the mod gave an explanation), posters can not.

-> I cannot imagine that it would be technical impossible or too complicated to do one of the following two things.
a) make the explanation the mods can see visible for posters
maybe it is possible to seperate this function from all the extra authorization (technically)
b) create a function that if a mod deletes a post the poster gets an automated pm.
as I understood mods either give a reason per definition or at least have the option to give a reason when they delete a thread as of now. why not have the process like this:
-mod clicks 'delete button'
-instead of 'are you sure' a popup with checkboxes opens asking mod to pick a reason (offtopic, spam, personal info, ....... other)
-mod clicks confirm or cancel
-once mod clicks confirm a PM gets AUTOMATICALLY sent to the poster of the post that got deleted. it contains the reason (what the mod picked from the checkbox menu), it contains a standard phrase like 'if you disagree with this deletion, please make yourself familiar with the forums rules in the sticky. should you further disagree or have any questions regarding this action, please feel free to contact [name of mod gets automatically inserted].

this would provide posters with all the info without creating more work for the mods (well maybe one click more, but that should really be reasonable). obviously creates a one time effort for admins.

Like.. all the extra work involved in sending that AUTOMATIC PM when you get a warning/infraction. Maybe there's a related solution here......

yeah if you ignore that the mod still has to fill in the information even if the pm gets sent automatically and then deal with the ******s who start arguing about it

An automated system, if that was possible to set up (I assume it is but I'm not a computer person so for all I know there's some obstacle that makes this difficult to do), would obviously do away with the "why did my thread/post get deleted?" questions, but it also absolutely opens up the door for the mods to have to handle a ton of complaints via PM. As it stands, most people don't seem to ask why if something gets deleted, either because they don't notice, they knew it was borderline when they posted it, or they don't care sufficiently to PM a mod.

If this is a serious complaint of enough people, I assume TPTB would consider it, but IDK if it was examined and rejected before, or if there's a software issue, or if the mods as a group were adamantly against it, or what.

Post deletion isn't that rampant, though. I assume Bobo has numbers, but I can't imagine that post deletions average anything higher than 1-2%, and when you consider how much spam gets snap-nuked, the percentage of actual posts that get deleted would have to be under 1%, IMO.

I think it's important to bear in mind as well that just because a post was deleted doesn't mean it's vanished into thin air; mods can undelete almost anything that's been deleted. If you think you had an important point or a lengthy post you don't want to recreate, you can PM a mod and ask them to reconsider. Believe it or not, most of us are pretty reasonable, and if we decide after talking to you that we've made a mistake, we'll fix it.

I don't see any easy automated solution that I'm convinced is a good idea. There are only two possibilities I can think of; no idea if either one is possible.

First solution would be to have the "Deleted By" and reason visible to all. The problem there is that kind of eliminates part of the reason for deleting them - so you don't have to see a bunch of crap. You still wouldn't, but if a long derail is deleted, everyone who reads the thread now has to scroll through a bunch of 2-3 line summaries (poster name, date, time, reason for deletion, etc) for every deleted post.

Second solution would be to send automatic messages for every post that was deleted. So if we have a couple people carrying on with some stupid argument for 20 posts, there's 10 messages for each of them when you delete it. Or you have some silly derail of 10-20 different NC posts, now there's 10-20 people who will be getting messages. Likely none of them would have noticed or cared, but once they all get messages, it seems inevitable that a few are going to feel a need to complain about it.

RJ - no way of seeing deleted posts overall AFAIK. But if you're ever curious, you can hover over the trash can at the right side of a thread on the forum page and see how many were deleted from that thread. This is only visible to mods.

on a similar topic, pog game mod usergroup should have that trashcan function to see who deleted posts in a thread in addition to open/lock

Hover over the trash can?

This all can be solved by, "What did the mod say when you PMed them?"

If I get a PM and I wasn't the mod who did the deleting on a forum I'm a mod on, I can still see their note and let the poster know who deleted it and why (there are some minor exceptions, but it isn't important to the normal course of events). I'll usually read the post and let the poster know who to contact.

I'll also note that 99.9999% of the time, the deletion was justified and would have done it myself.

fwiw, if all mods enter a reason (unless it is painfully obv), so that another mod of that forum can easily see why a post has been deleted, then there might really not be a reason for an automated process.
most of the time it really should be obvious why something got deleted and posters should take a few minutes to read the forum rules anyways.

so i guess the process should go like this
- post gets deleted
- poster realises that he shouldn't have made the post. alternatively poster (re-)reads the forum rules to understand why.
- if poster still doesn't understand why it got deleted he sends a pm to ANY mod of that forum
- said mod replies providing the reason.
I don't think it is even necessary to tell the poster which mod deleted a post when a reason is visible/obvious to the mod and that should be the case pretty close to always.

I would say that nearly all mods enter a reason nearly every time.

However some of the reasons might be "troll gon' troll" or "dumbass on a rampage"

geez, mods position is awful.

my 2 cents.

I think it's pretty hilarious that Zeno was doing something as a matter of course each time he deleted a post, thinking it was helpful/instructive to all posters in SMP, but no one could see it.

Pretty sure you have the power to change the text of his post because I've seen it done before. You could just put:
in the place of their post to achieve what you want.

Just a thought. Never been to SMP, myself.

I'd suggest contributing more like 5 cents or no cents. There have been a wide range of mod opinions and suggestions in this thread, so your post really tells us nothing.