Deleted messages: Completely dissappearance Vs. "This message was deleted".

[IntelliMission]

By completely deleting a message (or a few of them), somebody reading the topic a few days after the incident may get the wrong impression.

 

This has happened recently in a famous topic: many messages with personal attacks were removed, so people who came later thought that some users were paranoid about some mysterious "haters" that almost never appeared in the topic. The reality, as revealed by the mods, is that the topic was actually about 30 pages longer including the deleted messages.

 

I think the best approach would be to leave the page structure intact but replacing the moderated message with "This message has broken the forum's rules and therefore has been deleted."

 

 

Edited July 26, 2020 by IntelliMission

[IntelliMission]

For some reason, the new topic didn't appear from the main menu, so I decided to create this message to make it visible (it worked).

Edited July 26, 2020 by IntelliMission

[Prosystemsearch]

I think there should be a deleted post message, TBH.

[+Karl G]

Mods generally post something when they have to clean up a topic to warn people not to do more of the same. That gives the context for missing posts.