Note: This question is partially spurred by this thread here on Meta Stack Exchange as well as this moderator Q&A thread on Meta Science Fiction & Fantasy. Full disclosure: I have been suspended from “Science Fiction and Fantasy” for the time being so if that colors your opinion of this question…...
It's a bit hard to know if this is an issue or not without an example or two. (Obviously, that's a bit of a Catch 22: non-moderators can't see deleted chat messages.) I looked back the last 12 hours in Mos Eisley and only found one example by a moderator candidate. That chat item didn't ping anyone and seemed like someone thinking out loud and then changing their mind. It doesn't seem that abusive of the system. (I mean, I've seen far worse on other rooms that I shall not name.) It's also possible that the chat items were removed by a moderator. It's hard to know without some examples. :-(
@JonEricson This is not about anything recent. Examples I know of exist from a month or so back at least; I didn’t check today. But honestly I have seen this one user consistently engage in this behavior when they are in the chat room. Note that I have witnessed this when I have logged into the chat under my username or simply viewed it as a non-logged in user.
I am so, SO tired of all of these posts about the SciFi election that try to pretend to not be about the SciFi election. Can SOMEONE please just make a post on Meta SciFi about the election wherein they come right out and say what they don't like about someone running, and then ask us all for a good therapist recommendation so they can get over it and we can go back to talking about whether Watership Down is on-topic or not?
@Shog9 I can’t post on Meta SFF due to suspension which you are aware of and I am clear about here. And the issue of the chat aspect is valid outside of SFF since there are 150+ sites. Do you want me to simply not post anything about negative user interactions and tools to deal with it? Because the reality is if you remove the SFF aspects I mention you probably would have chastised me for not being clear about what started this thread. Now that I have added that info… I am genuine about how to deal with users who engage in non-“be nice” behavior in the chat who then delete their comments.
@Shog9 Which is all to say… Forget about SFF… Is it acceptable for someone to be in a chat, disparage another user there in front of others and delete their trail like that? And I clearly state at the bottom of my question the moderator aspect; if this behavior is acceptable for regular users in some way does it factor into a moderator decision? As for your “therapist” rant, you realize I posted this after simply reading this stuff in the past 24 hours and saw that thread, saw that user and noted, “You know what, they do this. Is this right? I should ask.” That is all I did here.
You at least have an excuse, @Jake. Although I'd still just as soon you'd posted, described or even linked to a concrete example. I mean... Clearly you don't think this is right, or you wouldn't bring it up. And I gotta admit, it doesn't sound right. But then again, I'm going off of your observation here, which is vague as all get-out and pretty clearly motivated by someone's presence in an election. It feels passive aggressive, like you're asking us all to do more work so that you can point a finger without having to actually point a finger.
user213963
9:12 PM
@JonEricson room owners can also see deleted messages in their room.
@Shog9 How can I bring up concrete examples of deleted comments in a chat room? That is the “Catch 22” here. Also, I would have commented on the nominated moderator’s post if I could saying something like this, “I seem to recall you posting comments in chat and then deleting them right away. Do you want to address that here? Now that this has reminded me I will be posting a lager Meta thread on the overall concept of persistent comment removal from chat rooms in general. Feel free to comment there.” Please assume good faith here; because past this issue I really don’t care about SFF.
@MichaelT That might be the answer. But how can a regular user alert a room owner about behavior like that?
user213963
@JakeGould in theory, room owners are fairly active in the room (at least have an eye on it). Immediately pinging a room owner would let them get back to the proper spot in the chat history to pull up the deleted message and escalate the issue as appropriate. That assumes, however, that the room owner doesn't condone such behavior (not that I would know anything about being a room owner and writing under erasure about possibly sensitive topics... nope... not at all).
Well, that's the problem, isn't it? You're going from memory. All the talk about the election, the site, etc... Are based on a memory of the past that may or may not be accurate and which you can't prove. If you could comment under a nomination, you'd still be going from memory. Unless you had screenshots or something, the best thing you could do - and the best advice anyone can give you - is what Mad says below: contact us with whatever details you do have and let us try & figure out if there's a problem or not. The rest of this is irrelevant.
@Shog9 There’s no discussion here I see. Look, the reason I posted this is because there is a logical “Catch 22” here and that’s it. If your past impressions of me are somehow tainting the overall spirit of this post to the point you need to immediately rant about supposed “passive aggressiveness” then who is approaching this with an open mind towards the topic and who is getting bent out of shape. You can confirm my overall SE activity is down, correct? Well there you go.
@JakeGould If you can point to examples in the general area of a deleted message that would be helpful. Yup, the stuff is deleted but even and example nearish the deletion in the transcript would be nice. But a more direct answer is you can always use a mod flag pointing the mods to where the issue was in the transcript. They would be able to research the transcript in more detail, but they need examples.
@Shog9 - OK, you HAVE to admit it, sorry. If JakeGould and I do exactly the same thing, you can't POSSIBLY think it's some nefarious collusion between the two of us. When you add all the other users (who, as I mentioned previously, in large chunk don't all like each other from my impressions), you have way too many non-correllated datapoints.
I never said it was a "nefarious collusion", @DVK. Quite the opposite: I think this pattern is emerging because y'all don't want to (or can't) actually talk to each other, so - consciously or otherwise - you're trying to use MSE discussions as a proxy for that. Which is totally understandable, but also pretty frustrating for those of us who are just here to answer questions. Also, you owe me an email now.
@Shog9 - huh? Now I'm confused. The main reason I use MSE is because (1) I'm posting about generic issues - the fact that they occur on SFF does NOT make them non-generic; and (2) I want to get an unbiased opinion of the larger SE community that isn't tainted by SFF's baggage of current strife, views, histories etc... I strongly suspect that other posting to MSE have the same reasoning.
@Shog9 - not in my experience. With exception of my last post that brought in all the moderators and seemingly no regular users (I could be wrong, no data), none of my other MSE posts generated nearly as much opposition (except on merits) as anything I'd say on MSFF. Take a look at votes on my MSE posts.
@Shog9 - email it is. I was mostly trying to make 1 point: you can't find more uncorrellated data points than the 2 users on this thread. I don't even know what the issue being discussed is, except I am not involved, being banned from chat :)
