Are Posts/Threads Disappearing???

OK, maybe I just dreamed it, but I was going to reply to a thread I read earlier & its gone. Someone was taking a weight loss drug & I wanted to ask if it was effective & if they experienced side effects. Its just gone. Also gone are some posts from a couple of weeks ago regarding Apria & the credit card debacle. There were others too that I thought I might reply later, but I never found them again. I thought it was me until I distinctly remember today's post from a few hours ago.

Anyone else notice anything?

Jen

I noted a couple of posts disappearing immediately after a post of mine on a thread this afternoon.

Sometimes posts seem to disappear based on the user settings. Go to your User Control Panel, Board Preferences, Edit Display Options, and check the settings. If the post in question does not fall within the time frame specified, it may appear to "vanish". Posts older than the settings will not display. So, a post you see yesterday could "age out" over night and not appear today.

Maybe they were sent out for aging, lately many posts after 7 to 9 years have been brought back as fine wine or whine. Maybe they are being matured. Jim

It is possible that the board sponsors received a complaint from a company mentioned in the post and removed it to avoid legal hassles.

It is also possible that someone tagged them as spam and the board software automatically removed them although my recollection of that kind of thing is that only the individual post gets removed and not the rest of the responses.

The recent post concerning Apria have been quite negative so having them removed doesn't surprise me.

It was my understanding that this forum was 'un-moderated' meaning that the board sponsors don't remove posts, and for the most part don't read everything here, just what is brought to their attention. I can see why they may have removed posts with the name Apria, so I will be sure to refer to them as Crapria in the future. That is not a legal name, so should not cause a problem.

The post I am referring to would not have been removed by the board sponsors, it referred to the generic name of a diet pill with no reference to any company or licensed product so the question still exists, who is removing posts?

Jen....Here are some Apria CC posts.

viewtopic/t97797/Apria-Healthcare-Credi ... harge.html


viewtopic.php?f=1&t=97754&st=0&sk=t&sd= ... ia#p906103

Thank you LSAT, I thought I was losing my mind. No wait - I think I've already lost it.

Thanks so much for finding this & Sorry to have bothered everyone with my dumb thoughts. I really just didn't look far enough to find these. Duh...I never thought to do a search.

Again, thanks so much LSAT.

Jen

I'm glad Jen found the thread she was interested in, but the issue of the 'spam button' abuse still remains. I've never used the SPAM button but maybe only 'super users' should have that option. There aren't really that many true spam or advertizing posts anyway. It disturbs me that some of the looney tunes on this forum have spam button power of destruction simply because they've been around long enough to gain that privilege. It's a powerful tool and it seems foolish to me to just hand it out to anybody that has a few months of forum membership under their belt. What's a 'super user', as I mentioned above? Beats me but maybe it's a long term member who's recognized as being level headed, trustworthy and has a good track record of playing nice with other members. I'm willing to listen to other people's ideas regarding this issue.

Sir NoddinOff wrote:I've never used the SPAM button but maybe only 'super users' should have that option. There aren't really that many true spam or advertizing posts anyway. It disturbs me that some of the looney tunes on this forum have spam button privileges simply because they've been around long enough to gain the privilege. It's a powerful tool and it seems foolish to me to just hand it out for a few months of forum membership on this forum. What's a 'super user', as I mentioned above? Beats me but maybe it's a longterm member who's recognized as being level headed, trustworthy and has a good track record of playing nice with other members. I'm willing to listen to other people's ideas regarding this issue.

I see spam in the middle of the night, and i have deleted some of those. They are pretty obvious. If I am not sure, I leave it.

I do believe the spam button is a little too easy. For example, on craigslist, it requires 5 users from different IP addresses to flag a post before it is removed. So, one person can't go around deleting posts from somebody they don't like. And the spam button is offered pretty quickly.

I really don't know if any of my own posts have been deleted since I usually just go to the next unread post and not look back on previous posts. There are definitely people who post things I would want to delete, such as really bad advice or incorrect stats that could lead people to quit trying. But I have never used the button on them. Not even on the guy who posting his ads daily, and even posted that he liked bothering people with his ads. I complained about it, but I didn't delete his posts.

I do think it would be good for an automated system to flag a poster who deletes a lot of posts with the spam button so that somebody can look and see if they are truly deleting spam or if they are going after somebody. I do understand that this would be a bit much to ask.

Sir NoddinOff wrote:There aren't really that many true spam or advertizing posts anyway.

They tend to run in spurts but I myself have spam deleted as many as 20 in one night. I know I am not the only one.
Carolyn and her team have been working hard making it more difficult for the spam bots to sneak past the defenses. Often I spam remove the same spam links but each time with a new user ID because when I spam remove a post I also send Carolyn a note with a link to the user's forum ID...this is registered forum ID. She in turn blocks that user ID from ever posting again. Of course they can use another email addy and get another forum ID but at least we make them work at it.
Recently someone in the UK has been pushing their kitchen cabinet makeovers.

So there likely would be more spam posts than you might think if we (forum members like myself) didn't spam remove the obvious spam posts.

I have spam removed an occasional member post due to out and out horrible profanity. I have a potty mouth and if it bothers me....it's pretty bad. I always send Carolyn a note and tell her what I did and why and she can put it back if she wishes and/or edit out the profanity if she wishes.
I have never spam removed a member post just because I didn't like what they said in general. That's a sure fire way to get the spam button removed.

I don't remember seeing anything "disappear" lately that shouldn't have disappeared.
The Crapia threads are still there.
I didn't see the diet pill post though. Sometimes spammers sneak a link to their spam product in the signature line and not in the body of the text. Maybe that is what happened in that situation.

So yes...I use the spam button..for obvious spam in the text or signature lines and for really nasty uncalled for profanity.
I choose to alert Carolyn to the profanity removal though...just in case she wants to edit or put it back.

Sir NoddinOff wrote:I'm glad Jen found the thread she was interested in, but the issue of the 'spam button' abuse still remains. I've never used the SPAM button but maybe only 'super users' should have that option. There aren't really that many true spam or advertizing posts anyway. It disturbs me that some of the looney tunes on this forum have spam button power of destruction simply because they've been around long enough to gain that privilege. It's a powerful tool and it seems foolish to me to just hand it out to anybody that has a few months of forum membership under their belt. What's a 'super user', as I mentioned above? Beats me but maybe it's a long term member who's recognized as being level headed, trustworthy and has a good track record of playing nice with other members. I'm willing to listen to other people's ideas regarding this issue.

One advantage of distributing the power to purge widely is that it increases the odds that the first person who sees obvious spam will delete it rather than reply. Once the first naive newbie responds with "What the heck is this stuff?" we are stuck with the useless thread. Night owls see more spam than you might imagine, but often it sticks around for only seconds.

Thanks for your explanation, Pugsy. I have occasionally seen posts that I wonder if they should be spam deleted, and others that probably should have been but I or someone else has responded. The original post is sometimes deleted anyway, leaving me to wonder how the heck the thread started. That wondering also happens when someone revives an old post!

I think overall the current system works well - if the spammer is serious they can reframe their question (not in one of those UK kitchen cabinets, I hope) with a new ID, and perhaps it will get accepted. I just hope we don't ever have to get those captcha things to find out if we are real or not - and they don't work all the time, anyway.

So a big thanks to Pugsy and "her team" who keep things under control without excessive moderation!

I joyfully zap ads. If someone's language or opinions get to me, I add them to my foe list.

I think this may be a good time to remind people that once you respond to a spam post, it remains there until finally it goes off the first page.

Likewise, when you comment on an old thread (or vote) it goes back up to the top of the first page. If you don't comment on those threads, in particular the old poll threads, it drifts down and eventually goes away. So much better not to comment, than comment that you don't like the fact that it's come back again. Hint/hint to certain people!