Why are threads deleted?

[John Terefenko]

I laugh how many times it is said here that moderators do not get paid and do it for free. All sites are basically moderated for free. Go back to why they were started for in the first place. This is a large site and I always believed too many forums here that are just not needed and could be consolidated but that is a topic for another day. Certain topics are taboo in most sites and people should know this by now. Moderators do the best they can but I do agree if a topic is taken down then in its place a reason why should be stated. Not hard to do. I moderated a scrollsawing site for many years and always did that if a topic got unruly.

[Rob Damon]

Do the offenders get notified that they are the ones who crossed the line. I posted a couple of times to the thread and would hate to think it was my post that shut it down.

Is it safe to assume that if we did not get an notification from management that we were at least within the bounds of what is acceptable for posting?

Otherwise how do we know we are the offender or not. I don't recall personally attacking anyone or saying anything political.

I agree with Fred. It is pretty obvious which posts are doomed to be shutdown and removed, so why not just shut them down after the first posting. Why let them linger and fester until they exploded when it is pretty obvious they will ultimately end up that way?

[Jon Grider]

IMO, discussion is the primary goal of any thread. If I'm not interested in a thread about special tools for guitar building or CNC tooling or whatever, I'll ignore. We all can do the same, ignore, stay silent or participate in any thread. The number of posts in any thread indicates its relevance to the most members, and some of the most relevant threads are deleted. If someone is sensitive to differing ideas or sometimes disparaging comments, the OFF TOPIC forum may not be their best forum option here. Another woodworking site had the "basement" where the members could bang it out over controversial subjects. It was widely used and you knew political discussion was a "gloves off" affair going in. If you have thin skin, avoid the basement. If you want to talk about cleaning sawblades, Woodworking Tools would be the forum to go to.

Disagreements are part of interesting discussion, be it about router bits or best toilet brand, or health care. We have many forums here, and I don't care if someone disagrees with me, even if it gets a little hostile. The Mods should not have to serve as referees in the Off Topic forum, participants should realize their feelings may be hurt if they choose to participate. I think any thread should be allowed to run its course unless all out threatening behavior occurs, and then members should flag it. Just my thoughts, I know they don't agree with TOS. I just think the level of participation should be the biggest factor in determining thread deletion. I expect disagreements with family, friends, co-workers, and SMC members. No sweat. I may disagree with you on health care but agree with you on the best method to make a mortise. At the end of the day, we all benefit from the opportunity to hear different perspectives. I choose not to lose any sleep over someone else's opinion.

[Jim Becker]

I agree with Fred. It is pretty obvious which posts are doomed to be shutdown and removed, so why not just shut them down after the first posting. Why let them linger and fester until they exploded when it is pretty obvious they will ultimately end up that way?

Well, because "hope springs eternal"? Some threads have lasted a long time when folks "behave nicely"...or the number of edits required remains small. The goal here isn't to immediately shut down non-prohibited topics within the community, so no, just because folks can get wide eyed and predict something is going to go south isn't a good reason to shut something down before there's an actual reason to do so.

[Doug Garson]

Jim, do the mods have the ability to block someone from a thread (temporarily or permanently)if their post violates the TOS so the rest of us can continue the discussion? This would also serve as a warning to them that they were out of bounds.
I agree with Jon, maybe we should just be a little more tolerant of others in the off topic thread and suck it up, you always have the option to ignore a thread if it offends you.

[Rob Damon]

Jim, to my original question. I am an old f@rt and get ornery sometimes without knowing it, I know that.

Since you didn't answer my question "Was it Me?", I will assume I had some part in it, thus will stay away from the "off topic forum" in the future.

[Jim Becker]

Doug, no. The forum software does not support that.

Ron, no idea.

[Bruce Page]

Jim, to my original question. I am an old f@rt and get ornery sometimes without knowing it, I know that.

Since you didn't answer my question "Was it Me?", I will assume I had some part in it, thus will stay away from the "off topic forum" in the future.

Rob, from one old f@rt to another, your 4 posts were not an issue.

[Erik Loza]

I was a Moderator on the Minimax Owner's Group and also a Mod, then Admin, on a V-Bulletin group to do with car modding for several years. Haven't done either for some time but here are some thoughts and observations. Some have already been mentioned by others:

-It's not necessarily a thankless job but there are periods of time where it seems that way, since you are volunteering your time.
-It is easier to bin a whole thread than to go through and delete nasty posts. No Mod or Admin has the time for that.
-It is impossible to make every member happy 100% of the time. No matter how you run the forum, someone will always take issue with one thing or another.
-There is substantially more work that happens in the background, keeping out spammers and bots, than the public sees or probably understands.
-Allowing troublemakers to stay will derail your whole group and drive away peaceful members. Unfortunately, troublemakers rarely seemed to respond to things like time-outs or warnings/infractions. As soon as they came back, they started right in again and often, doubled-down, since they had a chip on their shoulder for being given a time-out. The only permanent solution was removing them from the group.

All this being said, could there be value in sub-forum for political talk? In the car forum I administrated, once we got rid of the bullies and trolls, members who otherwise followed the rules (predominantly in their 20's) still wanted a place to blow off steam. There was a long conversation among us Mods and Admins in the background. The conclusion we all came to was that by giving these guys a sub-forum, it actually kept them out of the general population and reduced the amount of time we spent having to do things like issues warnings/infractions or binning posts. There were rules, of course: No call-outs/insults/threats/personal attacks, no nudity/porn, no gore/violence images, but this sub-forum was otherwise open to pretty much any topic. It did require strong management at first but after a while, kind of ran itself and most importantly, kept things more peaceful in the general forums. Just some food for thought and thanks again to the whole SMC team for all the great work you do.

Erik

[Jim Becker]

Since the TOS prohibits political and religious discussion explicitly, there can be no sub-forum for the same and honestly, we just don't need that here. There are good places "out there" for folks to slap each other up-side their face on these things already.

[Jim Matthews]

Since the TOS prohibits political and religious discussion explicitly, there can be no sub-forum for the same and honestly, we just don't need that here. There are good places "out there" for folks to slap each other up-side their face on these things already.

Religion and Politics

All members shall abstain from engaging in religious or political debate.

Going forward, will all clearly partisan political posts be excised, or will the entire thread be terminated? Too many otherwise healthy fora have been shuttered when they were forced to tolerate "Fair and Balanced" opinions at the expense of facts.

There are a select few that insist on bringing that here.

Woodnet did not ban users that erected an echo chamber there, quite the opposite.

Look at Woodnet today.

That could be SMC.

[Lee DeRaud]

All members shall abstain from engaging in religious or political debate.

One issue is that currently (and by that I mean "this century", not "this election season") the overlap of religion, politics, and economics is very nearly 100% for most people.

I was amazed the climate change thread lasted as long as it did: IMHO, it bounced hard off that clause of the TOS well before the post count got to triple digits.

[Anuj Prateek]

I'll venture a reason that I've seen happen on other forums: arguing in threads drives away new participants, who mostly came for woodworking info. Not saying I haven't done it myself.

+ 1000

IMPO, such discussion start going away from logic and rational too quickly.

[Scott Winners]

I agree with Doug. A respected forum member posted an insightful and intelligent explanation of health care industry dynamics in a heath care thread, and shortly thereafter the thread was shut down. I am not sure he has posted since.

I am not sure I am any respected, insightful or intelligent, but I am a practicing medical professional. In one of the many COVID threads here I did, umm, get out my big hammer and let loose a little bit. I promptly reported myself to the moderators and that particular thread was shut down the next morning when I logged back in.

On the one hand I have a public duty to correct health misinformation when I see it, on the other hand I am only licensed to practice as a Registered Nurse in Alaska and this website does have a TOS incorporated in the registration process.

I do not post much because I am not wordworking much lately, and I don't have much of anything to add to the knowledgeable wisdom all y'all are sharing freely in the woodworking sections routinely. I mostly come here to see what is new in the "time for some levity" thread. I pulled 12 hours today, put two of my guys in quarantine after picking their nose for them in full on extra in ET movie PPE, and was only able to release one from a quarantine I stuck him in last week. I have about five hours of charting to do tonight that isn't getting done tonight because I just came off a brutal weekend of call. Local to me our infection rate has tripled in the last two weeks (from 11 to 33 per 100k population) and 60% of the cases ever diagnosed around here were sick today.

If you don't have anything better to do tomorrow, please go find some amusing pictures for me to see in the levity thread. I am looking at minimum 14 hours tomorrow, plus carrying over the 5 hours of charting I am not doing tonight.

Might have been some other poster, I am not commonly described as respected or insightful. I am just a grumpy old nurse trying to keep my sheep out of harms way. I got grumpy in CAPS if anyone is running low.

[Doug Garson]

I'll venture a reason that I've seen happen on other forums: arguing in threads drives away new participants, who mostly came for woodworking info. Not saying I haven't done it myself.

I really struggle with the logic of this idea. If you really are interested in woodworking, why would you quit a forum with tons of valuable content related to woodworking just because a subforum titled "Off Topic" contains posts that are argumentative? Why are you even looking there if all you are interested in is woodworking? All you have to do, and I've said this before, is ignore the threads that you find offensive or not interesting.