I remember having a post in one local forum that was deleted by the moderator. When I asked the reason for deleting that post, the reply was that it was out of context. Maybe the moderator had wanted posts to be in his own words or maybe my English is bad. Nevertheless, I was not satisfied with the reason since I couldn’t admit that my post was out of context regarding the topic.
For mods and admins here, what are the reasons that you would delete a post or a thread?
As far as FP and I am concerned, I only delete posts that are spam or duplicate posts. For all other cases, I edit he original post and make the correction after inserting my name so that everyone knows which moderator had made the edit on that post.
The only posts I ever delete outright are posts made by obvious spammers. Posts that are made by genuine members that need removing get sent to a trash can as that's what you do when you are running a ZB forum as you don't get many of the fancy features I noticed that this board and others like it have. 😛
I don't see it as wise to remove posts by genuine members completely off the board as you might have to go back and read the post again if the member who posted it is challenging the decision to remove it plus it's also helpful when putting forth warns and other punishment so staff can see just what exactly motivated you to put out an official warning or punishment.
I'm not a staff member on here however I would still like to respond.
As Bluezone mentioned, I much prefer to trash whatever posts are made that need removing rather than outright deleting them as you never know if you'll want to look at it again or need it in the future. And the only time I'll really ever remove anything is if it's racist or if someone is blatantly attacking another member (which thankfully hasn't happened on any forum I've been on in years).
Use common sense. I remove or delete if the topic/posts are spam or that member double made that topic/post. Most of it that I have removed are more likely spam, Yet on my website I haven't had that much spam.
Also regards to merging topics/posts together I also do that if I have to. Like two same topics that has been made and rather delete one of them, I just use the merge option
I usually trash all offensive/bannable content, which moves it to a private, staff only trash can forum, unless it's something like pornographic material then I completely remove it.
