Add a way for moderators to delete all posts quoting a deleted post when deleting that post

[hotcrystal0]

Sokwe said that “deleting a post is meant to remove it from the forums, and quoting it just brings it back”. Because of this, I suggest that when a moderator (has to be a moderator) deletes a post, they will be given the option to either delete just that post or that post and all posts that quote it. The default should be deleting just that post.

[confocaloid]

Sokwe said that “deleting a post is meant to remove it from the forums, and quoting it just brings it back”. Because of this, I suggest that when a moderator (has to be a moderator) deletes a post, they will be given the option to either delete just that post or that post and all posts that quote it. The default should be deleting just that post.

I think that would be too powerful and hazardous. Example:

(1) Someone (N) posts something that doesn't break any forum rules

(2) Other people quote that post, and add some additional very interesting noteworthy information

(3) N edits their earlier post to add some forum rule violations

(4) A moderator notices the (now) rule-breaking post by N, and decides to delete it along with all quoting posts

(5) Massive loss of very interesting noteworthy information posted by other people who just happened to quote the post that didn't break any rules at the time

[hotcrystal0]

I think that would be too powerful and hazardous. Example:

(1) Someone (N) posts something that doesn't break any forum rules

(2) Other people quote that post, and add some additional very interesting noteworthy information

(3) N edits their earlier post to add some forum rule violations

(4) A moderator notices the (now) rule-breaking post by N, and decides to delete it along with all quoting posts

(5) Massive loss of very interesting noteworthy information posted by other people who just happened to quote the post that didn't break any rules at the time

Why would anyone want to do that? Also, a moderator can just edit out the rule-violating content in the post instead of deleting it if the post contains some sort of discovery.

[hotdogPi]

I'm on another forum where occasionally a bot will seem to post something relevant, although sometimes it's clear that it was AI-generated. After 6-10 days, the bot edits the post to add a spam link.

[confocaloid]

[...] The problem is, why would anyone want to do that? [...]

For example because their account might be hijacked.

[...] Also, a moderator can just edit out the rule-violating content in the post instead of deleting it if the post contains some sort of discovery.

When given an option to "delete such-and-such rule-breaking post and all posts that quote it", I can imagine the other quoting posts wouldn't be immediately visible. That can easily lead to large-scale damage that could even go unnoticed for a while.

[dvgrn]

Um. I've got some experience as a moderator, and there's pretty much no way I would ever trust this functionality if it were implemented. Posts don't get deleted around here without somebody looking at each one and making a specific decision to delete it.

Like some of the recent ideas about how the Sandbox could be changed, this also seems like a fairly tricky and time-consuming proposal to implement. No doubt it's doable somehow, but I'm not sure exactly how it would be done.

It doesn't seem likely that any moderators will want to see this option implemented. Deleting strings of posts in a thread is already easy -- it's a task that probably takes up less than one tenth of one percent of the total time spent on moderation tasks.

[Sokwe]

Sokwe said that “deleting a post is meant to remove it from the forums, and quoting it just brings it back”.

To be clear, this is the full quotation sent to you in a Discord DM (emphasis added):

You should almost never quote a post that has already been deleted. It was deleted to remove it from the forums, and quoting it brings it back. Further, I will often delete posts that reply to deleted posts, as the context is now lost for anyone reading them in the future. I only tend to leave such reply posts when I think they're important.

What you're describing here is deleting posts that quoted a post before it was deleted, which is quite different.

Typically once a post has been deleted there's little left to discuss on the matter. Most of the times I've seen where an already-deleted post has been quoted later were for completely inappropriate reasons (e.g., "archiving"). If you have something that you think must be said about a deleted post, you can do so, but perhaps try to discuss the matter without quoting the post, and only quote it if you must, and further try to avoid quoting any content that violates rule 1.

I am completely against auto-deleting posts. Then only feature I might want is one that identifies all posts that quote a particular post, so that I could delete those that serve no further purpose on the forums.

[hotcrystal0]

I am completely against auto-deleting posts. Then only feature I might want is one that identifies all posts that quote a particular post, so that I could delete those that serve no further purpose on the forums.

Ok then. How about a system that saves the post IDs of posts deleted my moderators and checks if any post made later has a quote with that post ID?

[confocaloid]

I think at this point this discussion serves no useful purpose, and distracts from other topics that deserve more attention.

[Sokwe]

How about a system that saves the post IDs of posts deleted my moderators and checks if any post made later has a quote with that post ID?

This sounds like it would be a lot of work to set up for very little benefit. I don't think it will be very often that someone quotes a post after it's already been deleted. However, it has happened, and some of those cases I believe are what prompted your initial questions through Discord DMs. I think there has lately been too much reaction to generally innocuous moderator actions (like deleting off-topic posts) or to the locking of game threads that were generally not productive and were causing moderation difficulties due to repeated rule violations (both site-wide rules and moderator-imposed thread rules).

I have no problem with people having fun and playing games, but these forums are about CA, and I think it's reasonable to expect that forum games be restricted to CA/mathematics/computer science, and that they have certain rules that reduce the risk of site-wide rule violations (especially rule 1 violations). I recommend looking for other places on the internet where forum games can be played that would be off-topic for these forums.