somervta comments on Consider giving an explanation for your deletion this time around. "Harry Yudkowsky and the Methods of Postrationality: Chapter One: Em Dashes Colons and Ellipses, Littérateurs Go Wild" - Less Wrong

3 Post author: Will_Newsome 08 July 2014 02:53AM

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Comment author: cata 09 July 2014 06:48:37AM *  40 points [-]

Because you underestimate how off-putting it is to people when things are deleted with no clear accountability or visibility. It's way worse than having an off-topic lousy post sitting on the page for a few days. It is like a hundred times worse.

You have to provide transparency (e.g. a "see deleted" section or a list of moderator actions) or rationale (e.g. Metafilter's deletion reasons and MetaTalk) or people get paranoid that there is weird, self-interested censorship and that the moderators aren't acting in the interests of the community. This is an Ancient Internet Feeling.

Comment author: somervta 11 July 2014 02:35:08AM 0 points [-]

I don't think it's a good idea to write things expressing opinions like this as if you're presenting the majority view, even when you think it is. I for one completely disagree with the first paragraph, and would only like transparency wrt deletions if it was unobtrusive.