# Notification when a moderator or admin deletes your message
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875
**Category:** Feature
**Created:** [2014年八月14日 22:57 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875 "2014-08-14T22:57:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@anon21958287](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon21958287)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 15:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/21 "2014-08-19T15:54:25Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Sometimes you just want certain posts to just quietly, softly go gently into that good night – whereas an automatic notification on every post deletion is a banner invitation for a lot of infighting.
I think something to tell you that something was deleted is better than finding out by accident later. Even if there’s no reason, that tells you something. Doing it quietly is _more_ passive aggressive than at least getting a notification.
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I do think it’s a good policy to encourage a PM on deletions, but requiring it (or auto-notification) is quite **beyond the pale**.
Requiring a hand typed PM…OK, I can buy that being beyond the pale. Not notifying the user seems closer to beyond the pale to me than the other way around.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 17:38 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/22 "2014-08-19T17:38:48Z")
Get back to me when you’ve run a large community. 😉
The problem is that deletions are the biggest invitation to a fight you can create. Why? This is how human beings work, unfortunately:
> **[Loss aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)**
>
> In cognitive science and behavioral economics, loss aversion is a cognitive bias in which the same situation is perceived as worse if it is framed as a loss, rather than a gain. It should not be confused with risk aversion, which describes the rational behavior of valuing an uncertain outcome at less than its expected value.
> When defined in terms of the pseudo-utility function as in cumulative prospect theory (CPT), the left-hand of the function increases much more steeply than gains, thus bei...
So sending _automatic_ engraved invitations to a fight every time something needs removal, is a deeply unhealthy community pattern. You’ve removed “my precious”, _how dare you sir!_
---
### Author:  [@anon21958287](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon21958287)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 17:54 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/23 "2014-08-19T17:54:06Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> So sending automatic engraved invitations to a fight every time something needs removal, is a deeply unhealthy community pattern. You’ve removed “my precious”, how dare you sir!
I’m much more upset when it looks like you deleted something but were too cowardly to own up to it.
Personally, I have a very high threshold for what should be deleted, and it’s on the level of inappropriate disclosure of information or, say, rape porn comments. If someone really wants to fight about that sort of thing, they need a banhammer, period.
You’re also refusing to give feedback to the offender, who has no clue that he’s done something wrong and should stop, or else.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 17:58 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/24 "2014-08-19T17:58:20Z")
As I said, that’s completely at the discretion of the moderator. I’ll just cite the [official policy here again](https://meta.discourse.org/faq#flag-problems):
> **In order to maintain our community, moderators reserve the right to remove any content and any user account for any reason at any time.** Moderators do not preview new posts in any way; the moderators and site operators take no responsibility for any content posted by the community.
If you don’t agree with those policies, you should choose to be elsewhere on the Internet.
---
### Author:  [@BhaelOchon](https://meta.discourse.org/u/BhaelOchon)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:06 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/25 "2014-08-19T18:06:48Z")
I haven’t seen @Dan_G’s suggestion addressed:
> [@Dan\_G](#):
>
> The forum can make it easy to do the PM follow-up by offering the option to send a message when the admin / mod deletes the message .
Overall, my preference would be to always be notified, precisely as @mcwumbly suggested. What about a site setting to enable/disable deletion notifications?
---
### Author:  [@anon21958287](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon21958287)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:07 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/26 "2014-08-19T18:07:43Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> If you don’t agree with those policies, you should choose to be elsewhere on the Internet.
Obviously, you have the right to operate your site how you like. I’m really objecting to enforcing your priorities on other sites by saying that different priorities are **beyond the pale**. OK, I’m also informing you how I react to your policies (and how I’ve seen others react in similar situations).
I can accept that I have different opinions than someone else. But your statements here seem to contradict your previous claims to “complaint driven development,” when you dismiss complaints like that. Realistically, I don’t expect the policy to change here, but I think Discourse would be better for allowing some automation that I think would benefit a community.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:12 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/27 "2014-08-19T18:12:01Z")
If offered, it would be a profoundly unsafe setting. I suggest you read this very closely:
> **[Loss aversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)**
>
> In cognitive science and behavioral economics, loss aversion is a cognitive bias in which the same situation is perceived as worse if it is framed as a loss, rather than a gain. It should not be confused with risk aversion, which describes the rational behavior of valuing an uncertain outcome at less than its expected value.
> When defined in terms of the pseudo-utility function as in cumulative prospect theory (CPT), the left-hand of the function increases much more steeply than gains, thus bei...
---
### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/28 "2014-08-19T18:16:30Z")
Given @codinghorror’s stance, I think @Dan_G’s suggestion is the best. Prompt the moderator so they have the option to notify easily or not:
ASCII mock:
Inform @user via PM why you are deleting this post? No, Delete Silently
`[textbox: Enter your PM here...]` Yes, Send PM
---
### Author:  [@anon21958287](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon21958287)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:16 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/29 "2014-08-19T18:16:35Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I suggest you read this very closely:
So, you’ve linked this twice in this thread, but I’m not getting it. To me, this argues against your position, because you don’t want people to realize that they’re acting contrary to site norms, so they’re likely to keep doing it.
The way I see it (and have reacted to it in the past) is that when I know that you’re (I’m) losing my precious nuggets of wisdom, I want to figure out how to avoid that in the future. That prevents having to keep cleaning up after someone. Maybe you have it out in a single fight or whatever, but the poster is more likely to behave in the future.
How do you see it differently?
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/30 "2014-08-19T18:19:18Z")
That would be super, super onerous – I do a lot of deletion of old irrelevant topics from Feb '13 to remove noise from search engines.
Getting a dialog pop up on every single deletion, would be extraordinarily painful, a massive barrier to cleanup.
And @boomzilla sometimes when you don’t give feedback it’s because you don’t have any historical evidence that something positive would come of the interaction. That’s why it is at the discretion of the moderator.
---
### Author:  [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:27 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/31 "2014-08-19T18:27:41Z")
Maybe something could be added to the Flag dialog for mods then… so in the case they do want to PM the user and delete the message they can choose to do it as a single action up front.
(I haven’t looked closely yet at how things currently work when you flag a post as a mod. Maybe something like this is already possible?)
---
### Author:  [@Dan\_G](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dan_G)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:55 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/35 "2014-08-19T18:55:40Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> That would be super, super onerous – I do a lot of deletion of old irrelevant topics from Feb '13 to remove noise from search engines.
The vast majority of forums don’t.
You could always add some kind of cleanup mode.
---
### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 18:56 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/36 "2014-08-19T18:56:20Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> I do a lot of deletion of old irrelevant topics from Feb '13 to remove noise from search engines.
This makes me very sad. ☹[Good open source projects keep a public history of decision making for the sake of Science.](http://producingoss.com/en/growth.html#using-archives) Also, search engines tend to discount old data that hasn’t been updated in a long time, so locking, archiving, and otherwise flagging information as outdated is much better than removing it altogether.
---
### Author:  [@Dan\_G](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dan_G)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 23:50 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/38 "2014-08-19T23:50:01Z")
It seems we aren’t quite talking about the same thing as @codinghorror. We’re talking about deleting _posts_ and he’s talking about deleting _topics_.
If you target individual posts, I don’t see how the UI that nudges you towards providing a reason can be seen as too onerous.
---
### Author:  [@codinghorror](https://meta.discourse.org/u/codinghorror)
#### Post date: [2014年八月19日 23:53 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/39 "2014-08-19T23:53:23Z")
Sure you could – say it’s a support topic and 5 of the 40 posts are no longer relevant due to something that happened downstream. How does that justify a) notifying 5 people and b) dismissing 5 pop-up dialogs?
---
### Author:  [@anon80392659](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon80392659)
#### Post date: [2014年八月20日 05:44 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/44 "2014-08-20T05:44:29Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> If offered, it would be a profoundly unsafe setting. I suggest you read this very closely:
>
> [Loss aversion - Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion)
I just want to know when we start getting paid for our posts? Or is there a random side-section about how economics theory applies to forum postings? Is your stretch of an implication that the mods would avoid deleting posts to avoid the fights, or that users would stop posting controversial material to avoid having mods get in their face about having to delete posts? Even if I were to directly equate a forum post with economic goods, I don’t see anything in that article saying that people are automatically belligerent about losing something? Just that a loss is worth ~2x what a gain is worth to people… so maybe you mean the jerks would post 2x for every 1 post deleted?
If you’re that caught up in loss aversion, just word the PM as so: “You’ve gained 1 deleted post.”
---
### Author:  [@anon21958287](https://meta.discourse.org/u/anon21958287)
#### Post date: [2014年八月20日 12:20 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/45 "2014-08-20T12:20:23Z")
> [@codinghorror](#):
>
> Sure you could – say it’s a support topic and 5 of the 40 posts are no longer relevant due to something that happened downstream. How does that justify a) notifying 5 people and b) dismissing 5 pop-up dialogs?
It’s possible that those 5 people remember those posts being there and might want to find them later for reference.
Here’s another question. What if the user thinks he’s making a good post, and can’t figure out why his posts aren’t there any more? Maybe he figures they just disappeared into the æther? Server error or something? Is he likely to get into more trouble if he keeps trying to make his point in the same fashion instead of addressing whatever the problem is?
---
### Author:  [@downey](https://meta.discourse.org/u/downey)
#### Post date: [2014年八月20日 12:31 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/46 "2014-08-20T12:31:16Z")
> [@boomzilla](#):
>
> What if the user thinks he’s making a good post, and can’t figure out why his posts aren’t there any more?
Or to extend this idea, what if a user can’t remember exactly what he wrote that no longer exists? How exactly does that work to change behavior (or at least communication errors/mistakes) in a positive way?
---
### Author:  [@DoctorJones](https://meta.discourse.org/u/DoctorJones)
#### Post date: [2014年八月20日 13:04 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/47 "2014-08-20T13:04:23Z")
I can’t understand how silently deleting posts can be presented as a good approach. It’s only going to cause confusion and does nothing to address the underlying problem.
I agree, silent deletes should probably be an option (that’s debatable), but it certainly shouldn’t be the only option.
If you’ve got a member who is that much of a problem in the community that you don’t believe they will learn from a dialogue, then they should probably be banned or suspended. This should be an absolute edge case, not the default.
Can you imagine if anything else worked like this? Getting fired from a job (no reason specified), getting prosecuted (no reason specified), getting disconnected by your ISP (no reason specified), getting banned on a social network (no reason specified). People must be given a chance to enter a dialog and defend their position.
---
### Author:  [@Dan\_G](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Dan_G)
#### Post date: [2014年八月20日 13:13 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875/48 "2014-08-20T13:13:28Z")
> [@DoctorJones](#):
>
> I can’t understand how silently deleting posts can be presented as a good approach. It’s only going to cause confusion and does nothing to address the underlying problem.
What I can’t understand is how Jeff turns his edge case into everyone’s default.
[上一頁](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875.md?page=1)
[下一頁](https://meta.discourse.org/t/notification-when-a-moderator-or-admin-deletes-your-message/18875.md?page=3)