Hi BoW, afternoon all,
Right, we've taken a look behind the scenes at the thread in question and just wanted to hold our hands up and say it shouldn't have been deleted, or at least not for the reason stated.
Unfortunately in this case, the OP's deletion request hadn't gone through the usual reporting channels, and was actioned without adherence to the usual deletion criteria.
When someone asks us to delete a thread, we usually do our best to persuade them otherwise, and offer all sorts of alternative options - we'll urge them to 'hide' the thread, offer to retrospectively change their username, etc. In most cases, believe it or not, this is what happens! We receive a huge number of thread deletion requests every day and those that actually get deleted are in the minority.
We completely take on board your feelings about the standard 'We don't normally delete whole threads but we will do so when it is to protect a poster's privacy' message, though and will be making it clear to all the team that the deletion of a thread for privacy reasons should only happen when someone's privacy is genuinely compromised.
Sorry that we got it wrong on this occasion. We may also have been slightly more lenient in general over the past couple of weeks, it being Christmas and all, but we'll be back on the case now.