Search the Community

We don't delete ever, as part of our transparency policy and also because members take their valuable time to participate in science discussions. We're being respectful of everyone involved, in the best way we can. The fact that it looks like your head is on a pike as a warning to others is purely coincidence (and entirely your fault, yes?). But I'm assuming that's your grievance, that the posts make you look bad? If I'm wrong, please correct me.

You may edit your profile to delete all of your personal info, but your posts will remain. Staff will not delete them. If you wish to leave the forum, the simple solution is just to log out and not return.

Some answers to frequently asked questions (or paraphrases of questions) that have come up in moderation efforts or in the Support forum. This will be amended as needed. 1. Someperson is wrong! Why don't the moderators step in and do something? We don't do that. The role of the staff (when acting as staff) is to enforce the rules, so we don't make determinations on who is correct. We do, however, participate in discussions as members of the site, and may weigh in in that capacity, but generally do not mix the roles of enforcing moderation and participation in a discussion. (Some "housekeeping" actions, such as moving posts to a more appropriate area, can still happen while participating) 2. Why was what I posted called a hijack? Or off-topic? The topic of discussion is set by the first post in a thread. If your post is such that it changes the discussion from what the original post(er) (OP) was talking about to what you want to talk about, you are guilty of attempted hijacking. Posting your own pet theory anywhere but in its own thread in the Speculations forum is always considered a hijack. Off-topic is related to this, but this usually arises in the context of commentary on an answer or a subsequent post to the original. Rather than continue the side discussion, a new thread should be made. 3. What is soapboxing? It's when you are simply making a speech, rather than engaging in a discussion. This is what blogs are for. 4. Why was I yelled at for copyright/plagiarism? Copyright is a set of laws that protect things that people write, and mean you can't just paste entire screeds here without permission (and simply existing somewhere on the internet is not permission). Under the provision called Fair Use, you can post small excerpts for review and commentary. Copyright also protects pictures and drawings, so anything posted here should be done with permission or under some form of Creative Commons license. Plagiarism is an ethical violation that occurs when you present material as your own. That is, you have not attributed the work of others. Whenever you are using the creative work of others, you should post an attribution and whenever possible, a link to the source material. 5. What gives you the right to censor me? This is not a public place, and we are not the government, so any such free speech protections do not apply. The price of participation here is that you agree to follow the rules. The people who run the site are well within their authority to remove posts that violate the rules. Moving posts to an appropriate section is not censorship — your words are still there. There are a number of threads where this discussion has taken place. The search function should help you find them. 6. Will you delete my account or remove some post I made? No. We don't delete accounts. If you don't want to participate anymore, it's a simple matter of not coming here. We don't generally remove posts, because doing so after the fact is disruptive to conversations. If you aren't going to stand by something you post, you shouldn't post it. 7. Where is my post? Sometimes posts/threads get moved. Though we try and leave a trail, it doesn't always happen. If you go into your profile, you can click on either the topics or posts box to find your material. If you hover over your user name in a thread, there is a "my content" link. A third option is to use the advanced search function and type in your user name as the only entry, and you will get a list of everything you've posted. 8. Why was my thread locked? Threads are locked if they are duplicates or if the staff decides they have run their course. The latter happens when the thread originator is not engaging in useful discussion — usually by ignoring critiques and simply repeating the same points over and over again. 9. Why was my post moved to Speculations? This has its own FAQ 10. I was expressing my opinion. Why are you asking me for links? This means you probably weren't merely expressing an opinion. An opinion is a personal, subjective view, but if you are asserting a claim as an objective truth, i.e. something that others must accept as truth, then it's not an opinion. And in that case, it's perfectly reasonable for someone to call you on it and ask you to support your claim. Any factual reason(s) you might have given in order to justify your opinion are similarly open to a call for a link to confirm it.

We're limited by the software that we run. If you have things in your profile you don't want viewed, you can edit them. But we don't delete accounts. Anyone is free to leave. It's easy. Log out and don't come back. As you've noted, email isn't PII, and it's trivial to get a "burner" email address of one so desired. Any association of identity with an email address lies with the service providing the email address, not us. IP addresses only resolve to regions, but even then there are those who use proxy servers (whether intentionally or not). I've run across a few examples in efforts to hunt down sockpuppets. A dozen or more different users who have used the same IP bloc, even though they don't physically live anywhere near each other. An IP address doesn't identify you, but as with other information, it could be used as a piece in a puzzle to do so. The bottom line is that any PII that is provided happens because a member volunteers it. And that genie will not go back in the bottle.

Surely it would be an option to allow users to delete their accounts without deleting their posts and answers. I'm sure other websites manage this; it just means said user's profile is no longer viewable and their email isn't plugged into the website and linked to the account.

Their excuse is that post counts can vary. Moderators can see posts that were hidden for breaking the rules; posts may be deleted after members already referred to them by number; and posts may be in the mod queue awaiting approval. I could refer to post #48, but its number may be different by the time you look at it, because post #47 was deleted. I suppose every post could be assigned a permanent number, displayed at the top right, and if #47 is deleted the thread simply skips from 46 to 48, but then you could see when we delete things, and the more censorious forums would get upset that their members could see behind the curtain.

Yes, you have to delete text that you don't want included. There are two editing modes, and you can switch between them with the little light switch in the upper left of the editing pane. In one of them you have to put in the quote tags by hand (or copy/paste), and this seems to be necessary of you want to quote multiple sections with your responses in between. In the other it no longer seems to allow you to do anything but have a single quoted section, and in that mode it is possible to accidentally delete the quote box.

That's mainly in a threads title not a user name. In the ADD NEW Thread function the last test should be. If the Thread Title contains "http" etc then BAN(user_name), Delete thread, Hide posts and exit

It doesn't delete it -- it makes the rest of the post bold, as you can see in studiot's example. It assumes the tag ends at the end of the post. I don't recall IPB 3.6 having this behavior, and I'd rather it leave the tag untouched than assume it should apply to the rest of the post.

Doesn't seem to be anything to do with cookies. My browser is set to delete all cookies at the end of a session. If I've checked "Keep me logged in" then I still get automatically logged in when I come here. I connect via a cellmodem so the IP address is different every time - that doesn't seem to affect it either.

If you backspace exactly to the beginning of the first sentence without overshooting you keep the box. Probably the quickest way I've found is put your cursor in front of the first sentence and press Enter so it pushes it down to the next line then highlight and delete the sentence as normal. Edit: Just noticed if you place the cursor after doing the above back in the top row and press Delete the box will disappear. It would seem the code for the box is embedded invisibly on that line. Nope I did it exactly from start to finish of the first sentance still no box.

If you backspace exactly to the beginning of the first sentence without overshooting you keep the box. Probably the quickest way I've found is put your cursor in front of the first sentence and press Enter so it pushes it down to the next line then highlight and delete the sentence as normal. Edit: Just noticed if you place the cursor after doing the above back in the top row and press Delete the box will disappear. It would seem the code for the box is embedded invisibly on that line.

Whenever I try to quote posts, if I delete the first sentence it delete the quote box. Whats up with that?

We have clear rules about what belongs where. Here's a link to what goes into speculations. Censorship would be to delete it. We don't delete it. We don't suppress it. We just categorize it. Note that if you follow the rules of the Speculations forum, your average tinfoil hat junk does not belong there. It might at first end up there by accident (or because we're a friendly bunch of mods), but we have a trashcan for the really bad stuff. Thank you for your suggestion.

I often run across posts where someone has written "Cancel" or "Oooops" or "Nevermind". I soft-delete them, which removes them from the sight of everyone but the staff. We never fully delete anything. I'll reinforce what swansont said about abuse as well. When we had greater editing capabilities available, we had members who got angry at something someone said and went back and deleted all their posts. It left many threads completely incomprehensible, except where they were actually quoted.

I was wondering if its possible for a mod to delete my account? I don't wish to be a member of this community anymore. If that is possible, I'd like to have it deleted please. Not banned. Thanks.

Why do we want you to stick around ? Because we've gotten used to you. This forum is a community of friends. I've disagreed with and probably pissed off quite a few people, yet I respect and would buy a drink for any one of these guys if I ran into them. ( have to hurry and delete my address from my profile, if Ophiolite looks me up, I have to buy him that expensive, single malt crap )

I find the quote system cantankerous at best but one tip I have discovered Write some text, any text you can always delete it later, before you invoke the quote function. You can then come back, at any time, and paste into the quotes at will.

As it isn't possible, this isn't really relevant, but I thought I should clarify anyway - my thinking was more along the lines of a new category of forum user, trusted members chosen from the active userbase given an upgrade and not any Tom, Dick, or Harry newbie. As they'd only be able to hide the spam and not actually delete the content (or even ban offending posters) as that would fall to a full moderator to do, it should help prevent any abuses of power - something that recently happened to another forum a couple of months back - and if any of the spam-hiders were found to be playing games they could easily have their privileges revoked. But as the forum software doesn't have the capacity for that level of customisation it's a moot point.

If that was a potential course of action, would the forum software allow for a sub-moderator account status that had the ability to hide spam threads until a full moderator can delete it and ban the spammer?

This is not a problem. Multiple reports of the same post are automatically merged by the software. We only have to close 1 report. As iNow said — we don't want legitimate contributors to have to wait to begin participating. That's a higher priority than the minor annoyance of spam. And as Klaynos said — the staff wants to be efficient about this. A lot of the spam is pretty obvious. It shouldn't be a big deal to not click on it for the short time it takes before a mod can delete it.

There is no option to delete your profile. You can change the your username yourself in the settings, if I remember correctly. Other entries about you in your profile you can also delete yourself. If you cannot change your username send a PM to Cap'n Refsmmat, he can change it in "the guy who is afraid of his Google past" or whatever you prefer.

I'm not trying to become another target for the mods to attack here, but could you "moderators" & some long-term members take it a bit easier on some of the not so scientifically minded individuals that probably just come to these forums to post questions about something... Considering they probably got confused with the term "speculation" and thought it meant you can come into this section to post things that don't have any theories or studies backing them up. I believe they are more so just wanting to post their own "theory" or curious thoughts to the more educated & informed people residing in the forums for their feedback on the particular question... Instead of receiving a subtle (passive-aggressive?) response which they all seem to get whenever they speak without citing or referencing anything............................... What I'm getting at is this: Stop being self-righteous pricks towards newcomers who just want someone smarter than they are on the particular issue to give them some feedback. I'm sure many others reading this feel the same way. Some of you do come across as excessively harsh. Feel free to click the negative button or delete my post, you usually do.

I acknowledge how strong the urge to respond can feel and how compulsive it can sometimes become, but let's be honest here... There is nothing stopping you. It's entirely possible with a bit of determination. It's a choice, and one entirely in your power to make. I do acknowledge its not always easy, though. If you must, consider writing it as a draft, but delete it instead of posting it. That can be very cathartic, and frankly mature. All the same... Very glad to hear it.

I was unfortunate enough to be managing my personal settings one day , , when I thought it might be efficient to delete the attachments in the 10 MB memory area . This was mainly because 10 MB could be filled quite easily , so it would be good to keep it clear . Later , I realised that all attachments on posts had been deleted . Would it be a good idea to be able to delete from personal settings whilst keeping post attachments ? 10 MB also seems like an amount of memory based on a time long gone ! Is it time to use 100 MB ? We must progress ! We need technological advancement !