Replies to post #20961 on The Question and Answer Board (IHUB)

[Bob Zumbrunnen]

Specifically, under his new rules, a post can now be deleted if it is not exhaustively referenced and documented with facts.

No it can't. Someone posting that as a rule doesn't make it one. Not unless that someone is Matt. I suppose the Terms of Service need to be more clear about that.

Some latitude is given to moderators to determine what is and isn't allowed, but not enough latitude to cover that one.

The most common example is Off-Topic. A moderator can, at their sole discretion, decide to keep their board very off-topic friendly or unfriendly. As long as that rule is applied evenly. They can't allow some people to incessantly post off-topic but not allow others to do it a little bit.

Board moderators function as proxies for the Site Administrator (Matt). That's what the whole CoB concept is about. Matt doesn't have to police every single instance of spam, profanity, and personal attacks. Board Moderators do it, and Matt reviews the deleted posts to make sure they warranted deletion according to the *Site's* rules or in the case of Off-Topic, the board's stated rules and precedent.

I checked out a lot of deleted posts last night after Matt asked me to expand the range of deleted posts made visible to him because they were so many.

I noted that someone other than Matt has been deleting a lot of posts on the EDIG board over the past couple of days. Most of the ones I looked at cited "Personal Attack" as their deletion reason and it turned out that they were, and they were often aimed at you, directly or indirectly.

That's the way it's supposed to work. The above-stated "rule" notwithstanding, the moderator(s) of that board, at least in the timeframe I observed, have been deleting only posts that really should be deleted, because they were in violation of the site's rules. No matter who wrote them.

Again, that's the way it's supposed to work.

Edit: I'm not reading the included link because I really don't care whether you're right or wrong or care to learn more about the company. I already know more than I wish I knew.