Thread deletions - reasons would be nice.

[TheOrigRights]

Thread: waitress put her fingers around the mug

Then
This thread has been deleted

This thread has been deleted by MNHQ for breaking our Talk Guidelines.

Which guidelines did it break? It would be good to know.

The glorious “ugly seashells with salt” thread from last night got deleted without even the deletion message as a crumb of comfort

I came to site stuff to ask the same question. I'd bothered to write a fairly long reply about 5 star hospitality training and the importance of not touching any "eating surfaces" including rims of glasses and thumbs on plates. The whole thread has gone so I wasted my time. This is the thread

www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/4680790-waitress-put-her-fingers-around-the-mug

The deletion message says:
This thread has been deleted

This thread has been deleted by MNHQ for breaking our Talk Guidelines.

On the face of it, it wasn't a thread that did break Talk guidelines. It was a reasonable observation and a query with which some people disagreed.

It's disrepectful to users who have bothered to spend time writing a response to just delete the whole thing without an explanation. If individual posts were in breach of guidelines then they should have been deleted.

If the whole thread has to go, and its not clear what "talk guidelines" have been broken it is a matter of respect for users to tell them why. Otherwise you just feel that posting a response is pointless and a waste of your time.

It also looks like it's cack-handed censorship.

@mumsnet please could you give us a bit clearer information about why this thread was deleted and what Talk Guidelines it broke?

Perhaps it was a PBP?

It's pretty much always "troll".

But if it was a troll, that could be referenced. Seems like only recently, we were getting more of an explanation than in the last few days, and some of the deletion messages were entertaining too!

I was on one that got deleted for "sock puppeting"

I cannot for the life of me imagine what that is!?

@SummerHouse . It's when the OP signs up for another account or accounts, and agrees with themselves on thread. Usually when things aren't going so well. But MN towers can check these things!

That’s when a user/OP creates a different account, under a separate username, to either argue or agree with their own post, while pretending to be someone else.

Hi @TheOrigRights oh we're so sorry - we really shouldn't be deleting threads without a decent explanation and will look into what happened here.

The waitress thread OP was a previously banned poster.

@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet can MN towers go back to employing the MN Poet Laureatte on deleted threads?! Used to love those!

@SpongeBobJudgeyPants where do you stand on vivid Haikus?

I also have two which have been hidden whilst they take a look behind the scenes! That's annoying as well. Either delete them or at least tell us why!!

Thanks @YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet
Shame, it was interesting discussion.
It's funny how people get their kicks!

Vivid haikus! Yes!

Yeah @mumsnet what happened to the 'SS hit me' one?

We had some concerns about the OP of that one so we took it down (and, having checked behind the scenes, we won't be reinstating it).

@DawnMumsnet so why can't you update those types of messages and say that rather than leave people hanging with 'we're checking behind the scenes'?

We had some concerns about the OP of that one so we took it down (and, having checked behind the scenes, we won't be reinstating it).

I just don't understand why you would do this if the content of the post was ok AND by the time you've picked up on it the thread has moved on into an interesting discussion to which many posters have spent time contributing. The people who are "punished" in this situation are the mumsnet users who are interested in the debate and reading it.

I get it if the thread itself is "bad" or "objectionable" inherently but if it's just about a previously banned poster then you should either act very swiftly or if you are too late to pick it up before the thread has moved on then just delete the banned users posts.

It is unfair to the other users.

Hi there @MyCousinWasOscarNominated

We do understand it's very annoying when a thread that was fairly active just vanishes. We do sometimes leave those troll threads up if everyone else is enjoying a good discussion and there's no harm being done. However, if the OP is a troll, and we delete all their posts, a thread often makes no sense once all the troll posts have been deleted so in that circumstance, we tend to think it's best if the whole thing just comes down.

It's worth saying as well that when we do leave a troll post up there are two difficulties that regularly crop up - one is that people don't spot that we've posted to say that the OP wasn't genuine and so continue to post as if they were and then feel they've been 'had'. And secondly, lots of people just feel that trolls shouldn't get any oxygen at all and are annoyed that we've 'glorified' their nonsense by leaving it there for everyone to see, which is a fair point, too. We don't want to encourage the hairy-handed little blighters by providing a gallery of all their best work.

So there are two totally different but equally understandable responses really. It's hard to find a solution that keeps everyone happy, so we try and just judge each thread like that on its own merits (or demerits) and make a decision based on each one, but there are some good ideas about things we can do to improve the experience on this thread, such as @Ginger1982 's above, and we'll definitely pass those on.

Thanks for your reply @HebeMumsnet

It's worth saying as well that when we do leave a troll post up there are two difficulties that regularly crop up - one is that people don't spot that we've posted to say that the OP wasn't genuine and so continue to post as if they were and then feel they've been 'had'.

Just on this point, if you put a "troll marker" (in more eloquent and appropriate language!) on the top of the original opening post in bold, or caps or similar then everyone with even the shortest attention span should not be fooled!

I get that there is a balance but on that thread it was particularly frustrating for the deletion message to be so vague and now I know the reason for it to be deleted at all as the discussion had moved on.

@MyCousinWasOscarNominated A fair point and well made. We'll give that some consideration. Should be easy enough to do.

These three on my watch list have been here ages. The top one is fairly recent but the other two aren’t