Why was my recently started thread deleted?

Legacy_user

I started a thread about benefits called DLA to be abolished in 2013.What does this mean for disabled people? 2 weeks ago just before Christmas that got a lot of responses and in the end. Ended up being over 70 pages long.

There were very mixed opinions and responses from members on the thread. And unfortunently not all of the members were polite and the topic turned into a flame war of name calling and insults to one another with some members.

As a result the thread was moved to discussion time.Meaning only members of this forum could view and post on the thread. But the arguments between some members and others. And the unpleasant comments continued.

Indeed I reported a post from a member who was rude to me to the admin.In the report thread link.

Now I find that the whole thread has been deleted.

Yes, the whole discussion was getting out of hand. And there were arguments between other members and unpleasant comments posted on the thread.

In fact the thread became so unpleasant due to some inappropriate posts by certain members. That I wanted to close the thread myself. And was thinking of asking a moderator to lock the thread.

But it seems that someone beat me to it. And now the thread has been deleted. And I have not been told of this. I have only found out tonight a few hours ago. When I logged in to read the thread and I found that it has been deleted.

Yes,the thread needed to be locked. As things were being said that were not related to the topic. And some people were insulting other members. And so the thread got out of hand.

But surely locking the thread, with a reason why it was being locked would have been enough. But why did the admins delete the thread? What was the reason?

I read the forum rules and the topic itself was not a violation of the rules. Although some of the posts from certain members were. As it says in the forums rules that it is against the rules to insult other members.

But I was not one of the people who was doing that.

So why was my thread deleted. It would be helpful if someone could tell me. Barbara.

1echidna

Unfortunately the unpleasantness continued this afternoon despite a number of posts being deleted. One poster was not only abusive but used very large coloured capitals which meant even if one wished to do so, entering into a balanced discourse was not possible. I suspect the abuse team decided that they didn't have the resources to sort out precisely what to do, and the thread was running out of control. There was as you said somewhere some personal details which I think are best deleted anyway as there were personal attacks being launched.

System

Yes,I know who that member was and I reported him to the moderators. Because he would not stop being abusive to me.And also his posts were abusive.

There have been a number of threads on benefits. And on the forums there is a warning from the admin.

That says a lot of other threads like mine have resulted in rows and arguments by other members.

And as such these topics have been moved to discussion time. And if this behaviour from other members continues.They may not allow threads about benefits to be posted at all on the forum. Barbara.

1echidna

annbarbs wrote: »

Yes,I know who that member was and I reported him to the moderators. Because he would not stop being abusive to me.And also his posts were abusive.

There have been a number of threads on benefits. And on the forums there is a warning from the admin.

That says a lot of other threads like mine have resulted in rows and arguments by other members.

And as such these topics have been moved to discussion time. And if this behaviour from other members continues.They may not allow threads about benefits to be posted at all on the forum. Barbara.

These benefits threads may well have got to the stage where more heat than light is being generated and the effort from the abuse team is not really fixing problems effectively.

System

Here are the guidelines laid down by one of the admins of this forum, regarding the forum rules-

MSE Dan wrote-

Discussion time benefit threads-

The Forum Team has been receiving an incredible amount of reports regarding a tiny subset of threads on the discussion boards, regarding Benefits.

As has been made clear many times before, and is posted here - http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/...23&postcount=2 – Discussion Time is the correct place to talk about the government’s benefits policy, and wider social issues related to that.

However, this has now descended into constant name-calling, tit-for-tat arguments, and outright rudeness, from a group of about 10 users. With the threads being so fast-moving and often reaching 100s of posts overnight, before the Forum Team can even start reading through them, it is nigh-on impossible to discern who started the arguments. Even worse, in the threads where this can be ascertained, other forum users engage back in bitter argument, thereby breaking the rules themselves.

Within an argument, everyone thinks they are the one in the right, and often spill over into rudeness because they believe their opinion matters more than others. In turn this results in a vast amount of reports to the Forum Team, accusing the other person of bullying or similar. Very regularly, three or four forummers are all reporting each other in the same argument, and somehow expect the team to use the wisdom of Solomon and sort out personal differences.

In addition to this, not everyone is always aware that other forum users outside of the argument itself send us reports, because they (often rightly) feel that rules are being broken - adding further to the workload and complexity of sorting the problem out.

Let us take this chance to remind you of the key tenet of this forum. ALWAYS BE NICE TO OTHER MONEYSAVERS. The corollary to this is, if you cannot engage in polite discussion, however passionately you feel, then do not post.

Because this gets reiterated many times a month, and often nothing changes, we are declaring an amnesty, regarding the benefits discussion threads – all previous argumentative posts will be disregarded. However, any posts from this point on that fail the ‘Is this polite to other MoneySavers?’ test will be deleted once reported, and action taken against the forummer who made the post, so please don’t say no warning has been given.

This is not about who started the argument in the first place – even if you feel you are defending yourself, keep it polite, or don’t reply at all. Name-calling, dragging other users into arguments and anything that we feel wouldn’t be said in polite company will result in action being taken.

We hope most of you can see the need for this – our resources are far from endless and we get abused for making the wrong decisions, or not making the correct ones swiftly enough. We need this new protocol to stop the arguments, else we will have to consider whether to allow debates on this topic at all.


MSE Dan
MSE Web Editor,

As you can see personal attacks against other members is a violation of the terms of service. And unfortunently that was one of the reasons why the moderators or admins deleted the thread.

But as you can read above, the admins are getting stricter in what topics they will allow and what topics they won't allow.

And so in future if you want to start a topic but are not sure if or not it is allowed, read the rules.

And it is a good idea to ask one of the moderators or admins if that topic is allowed or not.

That is ask permission first.

Before starting a new thread about sensitive subjects like benefits or such.

That way you have covered yourself. And you will stay within the forum rules.

But as it says in the post above written by one of the moderators or admins.Threads about benefits will be watched more closely due to the behaviour of certain members in those threads. Barbara.

cit_k

1echidna wrote: »

These benefits threads may well have got to the stage where more heat than light is being generated and the effort from the abuse team is not really fixing problems effectively.

What effort?

Just moving, or removing threads, or at best deleting posts, or maybe occassionally issuing a warning that is time limited?

Why not just remove the problem itself, the trolls, who are so obvious to spot, and let people debate in a nicer enviroment.

1echidna

cit_k wrote: »

What effort?

Just moving, or removing threads, or at best deleting posts, or maybe occassionally issuing a warning that is time limited?

Why not just remove the problem itself, the trolls, who are so obvious to spot, and let people debate in a nicer enviroment.

Trolls are only obvious to spot if you can detect the dishonourable spirit, not easy to do imho, and few of us are wholly good or bad.

System

Well trolling is defined in different ways on different forums. And some forums have stricter rules than others.

And some forums are so strict they will not let you put your signature at the bottom of your posts.That is sign your name at the bottom of your posts.

This article taken from the Wiki How website is a good guide to how to behave on an internet forum. And avoid breaking the rules, and so will help you avoid getting into trouble with the moderators and admins.

See here-http://www.wikihow.com/Behave-On-an-Internet-Forum

Wiki How have many wikis on how to behave on forums, and avoid being banned from forums. And it is good advice and applies to a lot of forums. Barbara.