Spinoff - Trainwrecks

[Shine]

For the Mods.: (hears Mods’ muttering and swearing under breath:D) Just a question - I have noticed that, lately, threads have just disappeared (poof!) instead of being locked. Understandably, there are some threads that make me go “WHAT? HUH? WHY?” and beat someone with a carrot stick but some of the locked threads were educational. At least, until “cocktail hour” started! For me, I was more aware of the search option (although I have forgotten to use it at times), certain discussions should not be brought up even under the most innocent circumstances and no matter how right you think you are, there is always someone who thinks you aren’t! Oh yea, spell check is your friend - that being said, I know there has to be a typo here somewhere!

Not to mention, I’ve developed COTH memory loss. For example, I’m positive I had posted on a particular thread, then I couldn’t find the thread. Ok, sooo… I’ll check out all the other threads. NADA, ZIP, NOTHING. Then I’ll check under my posts. Not there. Hmmm… maybe I just thought about posting! Yikes!

Thank you!

[Moderator_1]

Hi Shine ~

How we handle a given thread depends on what’s going on in that particular situation. If a thread is filled with personal commentary, insults, advertising rule violations, etc., we may determine that it’s a better use of our moderation resources to remove the entire thing vs. investing the time required to edit or remove individual posts (and address the subsequent issues like “Why was my post edited when xyz’s wasn’t?”).

We generally will just close threads that have only recently gone off topic or haywire, or ones that are maybe benign but not horse-related for example. We’ll often entirely remove threads in violation of our advertising policy if we don’t think the topic can be addressed without disclosing too much info re: something for sale or wanted. We’ll typically send a note to the OP of those threads to let them know why the thread was removed and offer to send them a copy of the thread (sans any inappropriate posts).

Sometimes, if there are duplicate threads on a topic, we may combine them (and leave a temporary redirect to the merged thread), so a thread may appear to be removed, but actually just be merged with another one.

Generally, if a topic seems “legitimate” (relative term, I know) and there’s overall some productive, on-topic discussion, we’ll try to edit or remove the inappropriate content and post a reminder on the thread to keep things on track and avoid whatever behavior was the issue. If the behavior persists, after a reminder or three, we may then close the thread.

Hope that answers your question! If you have any further questions about how we handled specific threads or situations, please feel free to send me a PM.

Thanks,
Mod 1

[Shine]

Thank you! At least this thread didn’t go POOF!