Fred Fuller
Moderator Emeritus
OK, a little advice to the ST&T membership re. deleted posts....
If you notice a post of yours has disappeared, that's what is known in the detective business as a CLUE.
It's a clue that in the judgement of whatever staff member is moderating at that time, either you said something you shouldn't have said, or you said something in a way you shouldn't have said it, or you quoted something someone else shouldn't have said, or you replied to something that shouldn't have been there in the first place to be replied to. And those posts get deleted.
Sometimes when posts are deleted, there's a PM (private message) explaining the situation and suggesting that you not do that again. If you get a PM regarding a deleted post, you usually get AN INFRACTION of some sort to go with it, because if whatever it was that got the post deleted was bad enough to rate a PM, it usually rates an infraction as well. Most times deleted posts don't get a PM or an infraction, they just go away. Actually, deleted posts don't really go away - they just go into a sort of electronic limbo where only the staff can see them. Your words are still there, just invisible to members.
But it might be some members don't know any of that, since we have an awful lot of new members. And the last thing I want is for the moderating process here to appear mysterious and arbitrary. It isn't. The staff here at THR talks to each other- A LOT. Very few staff decisions - and those are relatively minor in the scale of things - happen completely independently/individually. We ban spammers reflexively, as an example. We don't discuss it, we just do it. Most other stuff gets talked over.
The rules the THR staff tries to enforce are pretty clearly stated, and are posted for easy member access as well. Look at the topmost green bar on any page of THR, and the second button from the left, just after User Options, is RULES.
ST&T has a set of rules that are even more strict than the general rules that apply throughout THR. A lot of new members and a lot of old members who participate here obviously have not read those rules. I can say that so definitively because the new rules were issued fairly recently, and the hit count on the rules thread (stickied at the top of the ST&T Index page) reflects only a fraction - a minor fraction at that - of THR's current active members. Last night the hit counter on the rules thread was at about 965 hits, out of thousands of active members - all of whom have full access to ST&T. For those who didn't know, ST&T is a members-only forum- that status is relatively new as well.
THR is what it is because it is moderated. This is not an anything-goes forum. There are plenty of those on the web- if you want an anything-goes forum, THR might not be the place for you. THR is intended to be a family friendly forum. We consider ourselves representatives to the public on the Internet for the shooting and RKBA community, and we want to put our best face forward. That's why we have rules at THR, and that's why the place is moderated.
The rules for ST&T are even more voluminous than the rules for the rest of THR. The standards for conduct in ST&T are even higher. It isn't a question of "tightening up the leash" in ST&T. The "leash" has been there all along - some members just might not have hit the end of it before. Reading the rules might help explain "the leash."
So - there we have a little bit of explanation regarding some of what goes on here, and why. Any questions?
If so, feel free to PM...
If you notice a post of yours has disappeared, that's what is known in the detective business as a CLUE.
It's a clue that in the judgement of whatever staff member is moderating at that time, either you said something you shouldn't have said, or you said something in a way you shouldn't have said it, or you quoted something someone else shouldn't have said, or you replied to something that shouldn't have been there in the first place to be replied to. And those posts get deleted.
Sometimes when posts are deleted, there's a PM (private message) explaining the situation and suggesting that you not do that again. If you get a PM regarding a deleted post, you usually get AN INFRACTION of some sort to go with it, because if whatever it was that got the post deleted was bad enough to rate a PM, it usually rates an infraction as well. Most times deleted posts don't get a PM or an infraction, they just go away. Actually, deleted posts don't really go away - they just go into a sort of electronic limbo where only the staff can see them. Your words are still there, just invisible to members.
But it might be some members don't know any of that, since we have an awful lot of new members. And the last thing I want is for the moderating process here to appear mysterious and arbitrary. It isn't. The staff here at THR talks to each other- A LOT. Very few staff decisions - and those are relatively minor in the scale of things - happen completely independently/individually. We ban spammers reflexively, as an example. We don't discuss it, we just do it. Most other stuff gets talked over.
The rules the THR staff tries to enforce are pretty clearly stated, and are posted for easy member access as well. Look at the topmost green bar on any page of THR, and the second button from the left, just after User Options, is RULES.
ST&T has a set of rules that are even more strict than the general rules that apply throughout THR. A lot of new members and a lot of old members who participate here obviously have not read those rules. I can say that so definitively because the new rules were issued fairly recently, and the hit count on the rules thread (stickied at the top of the ST&T Index page) reflects only a fraction - a minor fraction at that - of THR's current active members. Last night the hit counter on the rules thread was at about 965 hits, out of thousands of active members - all of whom have full access to ST&T. For those who didn't know, ST&T is a members-only forum- that status is relatively new as well.
THR is what it is because it is moderated. This is not an anything-goes forum. There are plenty of those on the web- if you want an anything-goes forum, THR might not be the place for you. THR is intended to be a family friendly forum. We consider ourselves representatives to the public on the Internet for the shooting and RKBA community, and we want to put our best face forward. That's why we have rules at THR, and that's why the place is moderated.
The rules for ST&T are even more voluminous than the rules for the rest of THR. The standards for conduct in ST&T are even higher. It isn't a question of "tightening up the leash" in ST&T. The "leash" has been there all along - some members just might not have hit the end of it before. Reading the rules might help explain "the leash."
So - there we have a little bit of explanation regarding some of what goes on here, and why. Any questions?
If so, feel free to PM...
