A spike in deleted comments?

yRaz

Posts: 6,285   +9,173
Techspot has always deleted comments that it finds offensive, or even questionable, but recently I've had comments of deleted that were purely factual. I was discussing with steve on the forum about how apple uses high quality displays in their products despite my personal bias against the company.

How is that offensive? Over the past few months it seems like techspot is censoring comments to the point that legitimate comments are being removed. I will be discussing something purely factual on the forum and all of sudden everyones comments will be deleted. I post here because I like the community, but 3/5 comments of mine are getting deleted now.

I'm completely understanding of troll posts or spam, but TechSpot seems to have gotten that under control. Even if you continue the practice of deleting comments unnecessarily, can we atleast have an explanation as to why? I don't get warnings in my inbox, I haven't been warned or even notified to what was wrong with my comment.

If I did something worthy of deleting my comments, or anyone has a comment deleted, please tell them why. I'm fine with having a comment deleted if it is offensive, but tell us WHY it is offensive or else we will continue to unknowingly make offensive/inappropriate comments.
 
Can you point to the thread you mentioned in your example? I searched and could only find one post of yours that was deleted in the past year and that was in May 2014 but it was not the one you were talking about.

Of course, as a side note that doesn't apply here, if you inadvertently reply to a spam thread, when such a thread is nuked, your post will disappear with it.
 
Can you point to the thread you mentioned in your example? I searched and could only find one post of yours that was deleted in the past year and that was in May 2014 but it was not the one you were talking about.

Of course, as a side note that doesn't apply here, if you inadvertently reply to a spam thread, when such a thread is nuked, your post will disappear with it.

it happens about twice a week and I mostly comment on news articles. The latest one that I'm talking about was the $1099 iMac article where two of my comments were deleted. It happens about twice a week that my comments are deleted. Many people who reply to me have their comments deleted too.
 
When I checked the article comments in question, I didn't see any posts at all, from you or anyone else, that were deleted from that thread. I don't have an explanation for this. Only an admin (as opposed to a moderator) might have the option of nuking a post without leaving a trace but typically they don't. On the other hand unless I happened to notice it myself, I would have no way of knowing if he did.

Are you quite sure your comment was posted successfully? That is, did you check back to see if was in the thread? Otherwise, it might have been some kind of glitch.
 
When I checked the article comments in question, I didn't see any posts at all, from you or anyone else, that were deleted from that thread. I don't have an explanation for this. Only an admin (as opposed to a moderator) might have the option of nuking a post without leaving a trace but typically they don't. On the other hand unless I happened to notice it myself, I would have no way of knowing if he did.

Are you quite sure your comment was posted successfully? That is, did you check back to see if was in the thread? Otherwise, it might have been some kind of glitch.
yes, me and Steve were posting back and forth for 5 or six comments. On top of my comments being deleted, his replies to me were deleted. I've noticed that my comments get deleted most often on shawn's articles.
 
At the moment I don't know any more about it than I've already posted. I'll have to leave it to someone else to shed any light on this.
 
At the moment I don't know any more about it than I've already posted. I'll have to leave it to someone else to shed any light on this.
well thanks for entertaining this my post, I had assumed it would be deleted just like other posts. I know I'm not the only one to have this happen so anyone else this has been happening to, it'd be great if you'd post your experience with deleted comments.

like I said earlier, I don't mind having my comments removed if they are inappropriate, just let me know why it was deleted. Even you can't see what posts are being deleted so it must be an administrator doing it. And like I said, it happens most often in shawn's articles
 
@yRaz Are you talking about this comments thread?
https://www.techspot.com/community/...am-is-soldered-in-and-not-upgradeable.203361/

The way we've set up mod permissions no one can remove comments and have them deleted for good (meaning they are recoverable), but I can't find any deleted comments in that thread from you or anyone else.

Unless it's somewhere else in the site, the issue could be a software bug and not someone deleted your comments. This is the first time I'm hearing about this happening. Please confirm. Thanks!
 
Also, for what it's worth, did you post the comments directly on the article front page or in forum mode?
 
Yes, Julio, I am. And my comments keep getting deleted. I just figured some mod/admin doesn't like me and keeps removing them. Probably 19/20 comments I post are under articles, but I often post in forum mode.

@mailpup, I've done both with the same results over the past few weeks. Someone else posting a comment about deleted comments brought this to my attention and now I'm noticing my comments, and others, disappearing left and right.
 
Being a moderator in the past, I know I could merge post with deleted post elsewhere on the forum and make them disappear from my radar. I could do this even though I didn't have permission to permanently delete the posting. Of course that was vBulletin not Zenforo. I don't know how Zenforo handles merged postings. Could it being much different though?
 
I see no deleted posts in either thread by yRaz or anyone else, so far.
 
Afaik, at least one of my racist post (that I was ware of) was deleted. no harm there except my bruised ego.
my below the normal I.Q. level posts were never deleted. no harm there except my bruised ego, again. :)
 
I see no deleted posts in either thread by yRaz or anyone else, so far.
It isn't just those threads though, it's been going on for a few weeks now. I see comments disappear under articles all the time, not just mine.
 
I'm completely understanding of troll posts or spam, but TechSpot seems to have gotten that under control. Even if you continue the practice of deleting comments unnecessarily, can we atleast have an explanation as to why? I don't get warnings in my inbox, I haven't been warned or even notified to what was wrong with my comment.
In other forums, moderators don't bother editing posts, they issue a warning, and if you get another warning while the 1st warning is in force, you get banned, 30, 45, 60 days, then permanently.

I've always been rather endeared of the fact our staff, just pulls or edits a post, and leaves it at that.

So, while I've likely had hundreds of posts pulled,(certainly many dozens more than you're complaining about), I don't really think I'm important or special enough, to warrant an explanation of why each one was removed. I generally let what I have to say rip, and hope for the best. If something is pulled, no harm, no foul, better luck next time.

But gosh darn it, if you want a warning in your inbox, you have my full support in getting one.

But I will say, I'm almost always cognizant of why one of my "messages" was removed. I'm not inclined to play stupid about it, either in my own company, or here in the forum.
 
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In other forums, moderators don't bother editing posts, they issue a warning, and if you get another warning while the 1st warning is in force, you get banned, 30, 45, 60 days, then permanently.

I've always been rather endeared of the fact our staff, just pulls or edits a post, and leaves it at that.

So, while I've likely had hundreds of posts pulled,(certainly many dozens more than you're complaining about), I don't really think I'm important or special enough, to warrant an explanation of why each one was removed. I generally let what I have to say rip, and hope for the best. If something is pulled, no harm, no foul, better luck next time.

But gosh darn it, if you want a warning in your inbox, you have my full support in getting one.

But I will say, I'm almost always cognizant of why one of my "messages" was removed. I'm not inclined to play stupid about it, either in my own company, or here in the forum.

Well most of your posts are questionable at best, but I see posts disappear for no reason at all. I'm inclined to believe it's a software bug, not them simply removing/editing posts. I had just noticed an increase in the number of posts being removed/disappearing and was wondering why. It's not even just my posts. I'll be watching a thread and suddenly 3-4 posts are missing.

Originally I had assumed that it was moderators/admins removing posts, but it makes a lot more sense that it would be a software bug considering the content of the posts that disappeared.
 
If I may weigh in here I hink yRaz might be getting his threads mixed up.

I never chatted with you in this thread...
https://www.techspot.com/community/...am-is-soldered-in-and-not-upgradeable.203361/

Rather it was this thread.
https://www.techspot.com/community/...lower-cost-imac-now-starting-at-1-099.203330/

Hope that helps solve the mystery.

Edit: Ohh I see Cliffy has already solved the mystery, I feel slow now ;)
So basically, what I should take away from this is that @yRaz posts weren't deleted because they were never there in the first place?

Could you at least make him happy and give him his warning? Make an infraction up. "You are hereby warned because your imaginary posts were fictitiously removed. Or at least something along those lines....:p
 
When you start dreaming about making comments on TechSpot, it's time to start exploring the rest of the Internet ;)
 
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