My posts are missing

[Les Nagy]

I came here today to discuss a problem I have with Adobe and CC and was looking to continue a thread I started a month or so back. It is gone, as are all my posts since May 2013 (there haven't been many but...). Did something happen to this site that I don't know about? Is it worth my time to even post here if things get deleted?

[Andy Wilkinson]

There was a thread on CC that got "removed from view" a while back following some problematic posts. I did remind Chris (some time ago) that we were all hoping to see the cleaned up thread back up....but as yet that has not happened.

Reason I know this is that I have been having some issues with CC 2014 recently and looked for that thread to add to it. Not sure if it's the same thread you were looking for... but I suspect it might be.

Try emailing Chris and see what's going on.

[Gary Huff]

Why are you trying to post in threads that are old or are not about the issues you are having in the first place? Is there a reason why you cannot start a new thread that directly pertains to your issue?

[Les Nagy]

It was a post relating to the previous thread I started. There was nothing contentious about the thread neither.

I am sorry you think I shouldn't be concerned about my posts, all of them since May 2013, have been deleted.

[Les Nagy]

If two years of my contributions can be removed without notice or explanation, then it is a waste of time to contribute here at all. I hate taking the time to contribute to anything just to have it deleted arbitrarily. Chris can have his website and forum, but he can forget me adding any value anymore if this is true.

Edit: Please note that this was a response to a post that is now deleted that stated that other posts in the past have been deleted without notice. As Chris has stated below, this is not the case.

[Les Nagy]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

Try emailing Chris and see what's going on.

Thanks for the suggestion Andy. I should have done that first, I was just wondering if this was common or what was going on from the members here. I have sent a message to him and we will see what happened.

[Les Nagy]

I received an email from Chris Hurd, and yes Andy, it was the same thread. I also apologized to Chris. It appears that I might have been mistaken about posting anything since May 2013. I was sure that I had.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Andy Wilkinson

There was a thread on CC that got "removed from view" a while back following some problematic posts. I did remind Chris (some time ago) that we were all hoping to see the cleaned up thread back up....but as yet that has not happened.

There's still hope for that.

Originally Posted by Les Nagy

It was a post relating to the previous thread I started. There was nothing contentious about the thread neither.

That is indeed the one Andy is referring to. ("After 3 years, is CC working? Worth it?")

You're right, there was nothing contentious about that thread in terms of its subject matter. However, a couple of participants managed to take it off track with some pretty contentious posts of their own. I've been saying for awhile that I'll bring it back to public view once it's cleaned up. That hasn't happened yet, but it will.

Originally Posted by Les Nagy

I am sorry you think I shouldn't be concerned about my posts, all of them since May 2013, have been deleted.

First -- we never delete anything. The one exception is the rare double-post... that's the only thing that's ever physically removed, and that doesn't always happen. Sometimes a double-post is "softed" in place. A soft-delete isn't really a delete. It's still there, but only a moderator or myself can tell that it's there. We'll put a note that says "2x" to indicate where a double-post was. Another type of post that is commonly softed in place is a "thread bump" in our classifieds forum.

Even if there's a little dust-up between members -- such as what happened here in this very thread just a short while ago -- those posts aren't physically removed either. They're just softed in place. You can't see them anymore, but I can. I'll attach a screen grab as an example of what a softed (soft-deleted) post looks like from a mod's point of view. You'll see that I left a note, a reference for myself and other mods as to why a post was softed. In this case, it says "ot / meta / reply" which means "off-topic," "meta-discursive" or "reply to a pulled post." Meta-discursive is pretty much what it means when you say "You don't talk about Fight Club." In other words, I want you guys to use the forum, but please don't use the forum to talk about the forum. Like we're doing right now, in what should be an Adobe Creative Cloud discussion area. D'oh!

So if you could look at your posting history from my point of view, everything you've ever done is there. For example, the off-topic posts from this thread that I just recently pulled still show up in your posting history, because they're not really gone (see 2nd screen grab).

However, if you look at your posting history from May 2013 to March 2015, there's nothing there, which can mean only one thing -- that you didn't make any posts during that time period (see 3rd screen grab). If you had, and I deleted them, they'd show up as "deleted by Chris Hurd" like the previous screen grab. But that's not the case. The only reason has to be that you didn't make any posts during that time period.

Notice how there's *three* copies of the "After 3 years, is CC working? Worth it?" thread which is currently out of public view. There's an original, an unedited copy of the original, and then an edited copy which is what will be restored to public view. That's how seriously I treat any thread that is ever taken down here.

Even if a particular thread does get permanently pulled, I'd never actually delete it physically. Moderators can learn from it, it helps me to have it from a managerial standpoint of knowing where (and who) a problem came from, and it's just generally a good practice for any forum admin.

Does this help?

[Greg Boston]

Like Chris said, all the behind the scenes actions are preserved so we can learn/track/debate amongst mods about what to do, etc.

As a long time moderator here, I have learned to read posting styles of individuals and they will often display a pattern over time, both good and bad. Just make sure you're in the good pattern.

It's a tight ship, high signal, low noise environment, And there have been many, many positive comments over the years that agree with the ways of DVINFO. With all of the growth, it gets more difficult to scan everything for trouble, so please use the Report Post icon.

Regards,

-gb-