Please notify users of their deleted posts

[shaventalz]

As far as I can tell, there is no notification when one of your posts is moderated away. They just go silently into the memory hole.

Without knowing why a post was deleted, how can a user improve? Was a given post in the wrong forum? Did it fall afoul of some forum guideline? Did the moderator just not like it? And the "good" content of the post could still be useful elsewhere, even if just to keep one's own thoughts straight.

Example #1:
I've apparently had a bug report deleted. Don't know when, don't know why, don't even know what thread it was in anymore. But it no longer shows up in my post history, and the perceived bug is still present.

Example #2:
I've had long, thought-out posts deleted because they were a response to another post that got deleted (sometimes several levels down the chain, even.) The most I've seen is a "hey, we've deleted some posts because several someones are getting angry." Would it not be possible to (in an automated manner) PM each user the contents of the posts? For personal reference, if nothing else.

[Steve Geddes]

You can email [e-mail] to get deleted posts resent to you in the situations where your reply to an inappropriate post was fine.

[Chris Lambertz]

Echoing Steve above, if you're missing posts and there hasn't been a reason posted for why, please let us know at that email address.

In addition, our moderators do not have the bandwidth to private message each individual poster for each individual post that gets removed (and building a system of notifications is just not workable for our current forum environment at this time). If an issue requires more attention than our standard moderation notification post in a thread, we will typically email the user(s) involved.

[Leg o' Lamb]

cough, speaking from experience, I know that if a post gets removed for whatever reason, any post that follows which quotes said post is removed as well. Whether you poured gasoline on the fire or tried to make things better, it will not matter.

Also, from experience, cough, you can email the community team and ask politely what was problematic about one's posts. Sometimes the answer is the above, and other times it can be constructive feedback about your post.

Can confirm Chris's comment about receiving an email from a staffer cough.

[Vic Wertz]

Our moderators don't delete bug reports (unless, of course, they're abusive or break other guidelines).

Just to be sure that didn't happen accidentally, I took a look at all of your posts that have been removed by moderators, and didn't spot anything that looks like a bug report. In the last several months, the only post of yours that was removed was in the Additional Resources Updates thread, which has more strict guidelines than other threads: it states in its initial post what types of posts are and aren't allowed there, and notes that "Any comments posted that don't adhere to the above will be removed without notification."

It's extremely rare that posts get "eaten by the postmonster" these days, but with technology, extremely rare things do still happen. So assuming that one post wasn't what you were thinking of as a bug report, please resubmit it.

[Gorbacz]

Oh no, please no notifications on deleted posts. I don't like my inbox flooded.

[shaventalz]

Vic Wertz wrote:

In the last several months, the only post of yours that was removed was in the Additional Resources Updates thread, which has more strict guidelines than other threads: it states in its initial post what types of posts are and aren't allowed there, and notes that "Any comments posted that don't adhere to the above will be removed without notification."

I wasn't terribly surprised by that post being deleted, which is why I didn't use it as an example. However, anyone who didn't read the three-year-old first post in the thread and just saw the title probably would be surprised and confused by their posts vanishing - and might well do it again, assuming it was a bug. Automated notifications (which I realize the forums are not currently set up for) would help prevent this kind of behavior, and save the mod(s) work in the long run.

Vic Wertz wrote:

It's extremely rare that posts get "eaten by the postmonster" these days, but with technology, extremely rare things do still happen. So assuming that one post wasn't what you were thinking of as a bug report, please resubmit it.

I did, once I tried linking to it and found it gone. This would have been shortly after the big website update.

[CrystalSeas]

Gorbacz wrote:

Oh no, please no notifications on deleted posts. I don't like my inbox flooded.

I'm with you. Too many quotes-within-quotes threads for me to EVER want to get a notification each time they were taken down.