Delete

[Shuffle]

Is there a reason you are not allowed to delete your own posts or threads? Is it because of the forum limitations, or because of some rule thing?

And if there is no possible way to delete a thread, should we ask a admin to delete it for us?
Thanks!

[Losty]

Deleting posts seems dishonest to me. The only reason editing is there is for typos and if you forgot to add something. Just like someone should not go back and edit their post to say something completely different than it originally said, someone should not delete their post.

Also, just because you may no longer want to discuss something you started a thread on, doesn't mean other members don't want to discuss it and/or would be okay with having their posts disappear.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Editing for around 2 hours after posting is what has been deemed to be reasonable. We do not allow the deletion of posts for a multitude of reasons, including to prevent the stymieing of conversation or the deletion of threads if the post is the OP.

Losty is also spot on. First and foremost we're a discussion forum. If people were allowed to go back and amend/delete their posts whenever they wanted then that would defeat the point.

The staff are allowed to go back and delete posts under exceptional circumstances though mostly we will never delete a post unless it contravenes our rules in some way (such as spam, doxng, copyright infringement and so forth). The deletion of an entire thread, 99x out of 100 will never happen, because that would involve the deletion of other user's posts. Again, if a thread contravenes the rules then we review as necessary, though even in that case we will usually close it (context depending) rather than deleting it entirely.

[Shuffle]

Oh, ok. That makes sense. I had a feeling it was going to be something along those lines.

[Pyrrho]

Deleting a post makes sense when someone accidentally double posts.

As for the editing feature, that is both useful and annoying.  Sometimes, one will be writing a reply to a post and one then finds that the person has edited the post while one was writing a reply.  And sometimes a post can go from something worth kudos to something not worth kudos.  Some people are at least sometimes better off with their initial idea than when what they come up with a few minutes later.  Of course, it can go either way.

[SteelCurtain]

For me, I edit my posts all the time because I am OCD about grammar and spelling.

But deleting posts is a bad thing in general. Other than spam and double posts, I have never deleted anyone's posts as a mod. People respond to posts, and it would completely derail a thread if an oft quoted post was deleted, for whatever reason.