When a post is deleted and a notification is made, it is a respectful gesture.
The problem with it though is that it is impossible to know what the post was.....because it cannot be viewed. Seems like a flaw in the system, huh?
I understand that deleting some opinions posted by members is a judgement call. I am not arguing the decision to clean up a messy thread, I just see the inability to see the offending post as a strange thing. How does one know what exactly was problematic? There is no way to "screenshoot" the post?
I'm not computer savvy enough to know a fix for this. It just seems like an odd situation.
Agree. One of the simplest things to do on a PC is to take a screenshot and make a pic file of it -
and of course, most everyone here knows how to attach a pic to a post or PM. Certainly the mods do.
Of course, a mod showing a modicum of respect towards the member in question in doing so would also necessarily
pretty much invite the "offender" to argue their case once they sent said pic attached to the notice of removal
of a post - and that can become a time-consuming thing in and of itself as well.
Therefore:
The decision of the owner of this site is to handle moderating the forums as they do now as a result, as subjective
and open to personalities on both moderator and member sides as it may be.
It's a tough thing, operating a forum on the internet - much more involved than most folks realize.
How would I know this?
Quite some time ago, I was one of a handful of admin on a 10Million+ member online gaming league site,
owned by a pretty good-sized corporation.
That was a different time and it certainly was a more diverse clientele (many also who paid for perks, as in here)
and a different situation to be sure - but as far as moderating forums go, been there done that, ultimately
as a "senior admin" who got all the trouble cases.
Yes, as one might expect, doing so at a corporately-owned website is a world different than one privately held,
including such things as published user agreements, rules of engagement, all of that jazz.
A lot of the personalities and subjective decision-making is necessarily taken out of the process of moderating
an online forum as a publicly-traded corporation - which is a totally different case than here at FBBO.
What I'm saying is that the moderation of an online forum gets down to who owns it and how it is they wish
to have it done - that's the ultimate "prime directive" in a privately-held site.
It ain't an easy gig for sure - given that leeway and the potential for lots of "gray area", subjective decisions
abounds.
It's all done at the discretion of the owner, ultimately.
