I've been lurking on this forum for some time and have just recently registered and become active. I have a suggestion regarding the delete post option - I looked back through several years of suggestions in here and didn't see it mentioned so I thought I'd make a new thread.
Through that time, I've noticed a strange trend. It seems that some users are in the regular habit of deleting all of their posts a few days after they make them (maybe it's only one user? the very nature of the posts getting deleted makes it hard to know).
Coming at this as someone new to the forum, one of the most valuable aspects here is the fact that there are years and years of old threads - endless hours of good reading material.
However, I regularly find myself frustrated - and the reading material reduced significantly in value - because some posts are missing from some threads. Even if a specific post doesn't contain anything unique or special, forum threads often take on a conversational nature and it's really hard to follow a conversation when some parts are missing - which makes even the remaining posts from other users less valuable.
All that to say, it seems like this is destructive to the intent of the forum and reduces it's value for other users. If people want to post transient content, maybe they'd be better suited on a platform designed to purge content automatically.
I'm not sure why this is happening or why people are deleting content here - maybe there are good reasons that I'm not aware of and I should just shut up and move on. But I wanted to post a suggestion here, since on other forums where I participate, users are only allowed to delete or edit their posts for X number of minutes - which allows enough time to fix quick spelling mistakes or delete an accidental duplicate post - but after which, if there is a legitimate need to remove content, they can talk to a moderator. This seems to help preserve the value of the material on the forum. Could this be implemented here?
Through that time, I've noticed a strange trend. It seems that some users are in the regular habit of deleting all of their posts a few days after they make them (maybe it's only one user? the very nature of the posts getting deleted makes it hard to know).
Coming at this as someone new to the forum, one of the most valuable aspects here is the fact that there are years and years of old threads - endless hours of good reading material.
However, I regularly find myself frustrated - and the reading material reduced significantly in value - because some posts are missing from some threads. Even if a specific post doesn't contain anything unique or special, forum threads often take on a conversational nature and it's really hard to follow a conversation when some parts are missing - which makes even the remaining posts from other users less valuable.
All that to say, it seems like this is destructive to the intent of the forum and reduces it's value for other users. If people want to post transient content, maybe they'd be better suited on a platform designed to purge content automatically.
I'm not sure why this is happening or why people are deleting content here - maybe there are good reasons that I'm not aware of and I should just shut up and move on. But I wanted to post a suggestion here, since on other forums where I participate, users are only allowed to delete or edit their posts for X number of minutes - which allows enough time to fix quick spelling mistakes or delete an accidental duplicate post - but after which, if there is a legitimate need to remove content, they can talk to a moderator. This seems to help preserve the value of the material on the forum. Could this be implemented here?