Helpfulness being deleted

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1

I’ve been on babypips for quite a while now and love getting involved with the community. I enjoy the fact that we have so many knowledgeable and helpful people, and also that I can help a little with my views and knowledge.

However. Today, for some reason unknown, I have had a message flagged and removed by a moderator. The message was, as are most of my messages to new forum members. Welcoming them to the forum and pointing them in the direction of the School of Pipsology. Pretty much the exact same message I always post. For some reason unknown to me, the message was flagged and deleted. No explanation as to why, just a link to the ‘rules’ guide which has nothing saying you can’t help other members. So it’s a complete unknown as to why this helpful message was deleted.

Makes me wonder, is this the right community for me?

Do I want to be in a community where moderators suppress helpful members of the community?

I’m not sure.

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I don’t understand yet why your post should have been deleted.

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the reason, in that instance, was that you were (very helpfully, as you say!) replying to a no-value, one-line post which was itself unnecessarily “bumping” a 13-year old thread

while you were replying to that post, a moderator kindly and correctly removed it

the unfortunate outcome of that, on this occasion, was that your reply was left there as a “response-to-nothing,” also appearing to be unnecessarily bumping a 13-year-old thread and with its context removed! :open_mouth:

so you can see why it would be a good thing to remove your post, too? :wink:

(it would be nice, i can see, if the moderator who removed it had let you know all that, of course, but hey: they’re busy and they do a great job, so probably best just to let it go???)

for the future, as i’ve learned myself, when something helpful gets removed, there is always a valid reason for it, even though what the reason is can sometimes be a mystery!! :grin:

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4

Thank you for this explanation, and I can see that if they removed the other persons post it would make sense to remove mine as well.

However, I don’t really appreciate getting a message giving me a telling off without any context. That is beyond poor form in my book. Also, I would have to assume that they just deleted a new forum members question and most probably also didn’t tell them why. Not a great way to greet a new member.

So, unfortunately my question about if I want to stay here is still on my mind. Common curtesy goes a long way, and if the people running the forum have none, I’m not sure I want to be apart of it.

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5

no, indeed - that’s the downside of sending out a “pre-written”/“semi-automated” notification, i do see that

no, my assumption’s the opposite: that the new member got the “nice response explaining the situation” and you got the “poor treatment”

it’s a rare situation, to be fair - just “unlucky timing” that you posted replying to something exactly as it was being deleted

the fault is also arguably partly mine, in that i could - and maybe should - have sent you a quick message myself, apologising to you for having “reported” one of your posts myself (which i had!!) but i was also just trying to be helpful and “clean up the board”

bumping ancient threads IS a problem, because every time it happens, a current thread is effectively knocked off the front-page listing

i’m in exactly the same position myself, to be honest (but for other reasons, not about this rare situation!!)

sorry, Pauley, for my “inadvertent role” in the above incident

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Thank you for being so honest, its a dying art.

I think I’ll stay.

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With all the above in mind.

Perhaps the moderators should look into writing a coded rule that gives a pop up to members trying to reply to older posts and give them the option to rethink whether they want to go ahead or not. That may eradicate those mistakes.

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8

in my opinion, part of the problem is that the “Suggested Topics” list at the bottom of every page can include ancient threads, which makes it terribly easy and tempting for people to bump them and not notice their age - I assume, though, that this is terribly difficult to fix, as it’s been pointed out many times without ever being changed

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I’m not sure how the forum was build. If its ‘off the shelf’ and they’ve just populated the titles etc I would assume that changing the ‘Suggest Topics’ may be difficult, but not impossible. If it’s been specially built for them by a developer it shouldn’t be to difficult to change. I would assume that when it was originally built they didn’t have time (years) in mind so it pulls data from all topics, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to recode to ask it to only look for topics with in the last X amount of days etc. Also, if it is ‘off the shelf’ those kind of programs normally allow you to switch components on or off, so it may just be as easy as flipping the switch!

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i think that’s the situation

but people clicking on a “Suggested Topic” and then replying to it without noticing the age must be - almost for sure - the way it normally happens? the only other real possibility is a click on a link from Google or whatever, and that’s pretty clearly not often - at least - how it happens?

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Hi @Pauley1,

Apologies for the lack of communication from us regarding this issue. Your post was deleted because it was a reply to a post that was deleted. When a moderator deletes the original post for violating community guidelines, all replies to that post are usually automatically deleted as well. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this has caused.

Your contributions to the community are greatly appreciated and we want to assure you that it is not our aim to delete any posts by helpful members.

Again we apologize for this experience and we will make sure this won’t happen again.

Regards,
Jess

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12

I think many of us go through that from time to time - recently was getting some grief from one poster - then I remembered about the ignore feature - works wonders.

Stick around both you and Pauley

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i’m thinking about this

i keep seeing @tommor commenting on the people he has on his ignore list (they’re invariably people i hugely mistrust, myself) and that certainly seems to work for him

i’m not sure it would work for me, though

i’m not sure if i’d feel that i were really “participating” in the forum if i “ignored” all the stuff i don’t like

the reality is that there’s too much of it for me - and that’s my problem, not the forum’s

the reality is that i react worse to the bots, the spammers, the self-promoters, the liars and the (please excuse my being so outspoken!!!) idiots than anyone else does, and that’s my problem, not anyone else’s

my blood pressure suffers more than anyone else’s by looking at some of what’s posted here

and again, that’s my fault for having high blood pressure to start with

so i’m not well suited to the place, really

if i decide to leave (which i did once before, for about 2 years as i remember), it will be through my own intolerance, and i won’t blame anyone else for it

i know that i can be irritable and bad-tempered, here, sometimes, and i apologise for that

it’s not easy running a forum and trying to make an income from it, i’m sure - i just think that this one gives itself problems that its competitors clearly don’t have, and i know that it loses members to its competitors as a result, because i see what they say about why they’re leaving

but i’ve been here for long enough to know that that isn’t going to change, and i understand that i don’t have either the right or the power to change it (even if i sometimes wish i did!) :laughing:

but thank you very much for the kind thought, anyway!! :sunglasses:

1 Like
14

Picked this quote for a reason - imo a community forum needs guys like you - call it as you see it.

Now the blood pressure thing - different ball game, i take a little tablet each morning :slight_smile: