I did that to a whole board once for April Fools’ Day.
I’ve posted on a lot of message boards. Modded or admined on several. Owned a couple. My conclusions:
Without the ability to challenge mod decisions, bad stuff happens. The mods get loose in their interpretations of the rules, substituting their own preferences (Hey, we’re all human). Before long, the membership isn’t sure what the rules actually are, and they start getting banned, flaming out, or just quietly leaving. Eventually, there will be a schism.
Which brings us to two other situations that produce the exact same results. I say two, but they’re really the same thing–hidden moderation.
One form is hiding, deleting, or editing troublesome posts. If people can’t see why the post or the poster violated the rules, then they’ll have no idea what the rules actually are.
Another form is hidden mod discussions. This board at least gives notice and the reasons why when someone is banned or suspended. Many don’t. I think the SDMB could do better, though. Think about it this way: what forms of governance let the leaders vote in secret? Any good ones? I’ve seen too many secret mod-rants about some poster they didn’t like that eventually poisoned the well against that poster.
tl;dr is no to messing with people’s posts and yes to questioning moderation. (Breaking dangerous links or hiding doxxed information, notwithstanding, of course.)
Another forum I’m on doesn’t delete whole threads, but moves them to the dustbin, so you can view them if you really want to, but they can’t be replied to and don’t come up in new posts or anything like that.
They do delete obvious spam threads, I mean the ones that are basically “buy this now!” with a weblink - I assume they’re deleted here too, because otherwise there’d be no real threads to read on the front page.
Posts aren’t always deleted for racism because it can be helpful to let the racism stand and continue to out the racist, especially if there have been several replies to it. However, sometimes, especially in more sensitive/personal threads, they’re deleted and the people who responded are asked to edit the post out of their responses.
That forum does allow moderation to be questioned, but in a specific feedback forum rather than on the thread. I think that’s the best way. Sometimes the mods lock the threads there if the question has already been answered and a poster’s still being arsey, but they’re not deleted.
Haven’t been there in quite awhile so it may well have changed (but checking their rules just now, probably not), but the Paradox boards used to be notoriously strict. Public clapbacks at moderation commonly ended in instabans.
Yeah, just plain spam gets deleted without a fuss by whatever mod happens to see it first. Discourse’s built-in tools also help with this a lot: Several times a day, it’ll hold a post pending human approval because it thinks it might be spam, and it’s usually right. And I’m pretty sure that there are also posts that the software is absolutely certain is spam and never even bothers to ask a human, though of course it’s hard to tell how many of those there are.
Even if it wasn’t what the OP was thinking about, I did think it was still relevant. And I agree that, on the smaller subreddits, you do often wind up with actual communities. In fact, those were the ones I was thinking of first, before remembering the big ones.
I don’t really post on any other forums anymore outside of here and Reddit (unless you count comments sections on media, which can also wind up with a community), so it’s harder to remember how they were handled.
I’ve seen some forums that hide but don’t completely delete posts. They’ll either make the text gray or hide it behind something you have to click. I can’t remember though if you could discuss the moderation. I remember that most boards I posted on were pretty loose with rules, something they could do because they were small. You kinda knew the people in charge, and thus could just have a conversation with them.
I think I remember only one forum where discussing moderation was explicitly forbidden. But it was deliberately very strict. It had rules like not being allowed to state your opinion when you start a debate topic—you had to wait for responses for a bit before you could give your opinion, to avoid biasing the discussion. It was specifically about presenting topics that were contentious, so they were very strict on civility. I believe it had something like “Hitler’s brain” in the title.
The mods had a lot of leeway to keep it from becoming actually racist or anything. You were not to question moderation except by asking the mod in question, and they were not obligated to reply.
Nowhere else do I remember discussing moderation being a big deal. But it’s possible that, because it was moderated well or sparsely that I didn’t notice such a rule, or that it was unspoken.
I only post on one other board, it is a hobby-related board, and considers itself family-friendly, so there are strict rules about language. Also there is a strict rule that says no politics and no religion, although the line for each of these is a little bit fuzzy. Posts, series of posts, and whole threads can be disappeared without notice – although possibly the strongest offender might get notified by private message, especially if they are getting a warning. Discussion of moderation is not allowed and any post or thread about that will likely get disappeared post-haste.
I think the board works pretty well for the purpose of posting about the hobby. There isn’t much rough-and-tumble or give-and-take or snark, but there is a lot of sharing of knowledge. There are a relatively few irritating personalities, but they don’t have trolls or ideological camps or any of that sort of thing.
I am a moderator on an Excel discussion board, so the nature of the discussions is a lot different than what you get on an eclectic site like the Dope or Reddit. It’s a pretty targeted topic and it is very rare for anything to get personal.
We delete posts only if they are spam, or if they are gross violations of our rules, such as abusive language. Otherwise posts are not deleted; users cannot delete their own, and mods won’t delete them even if the users ask for it. Spammers are banned on the first offense. Other antisocial behavior may earn temporary or permanent bans.
Reasonable discussion about moderation decisions is tolerated (“Can you explain why my title is not acceptable?” or “English is not my first language, I meant no offense.”) but not to the point of belligerence. I have banned people for abusive language aimed at other moderators in public posts or in PMs.
We also have people who are not respectful to the questioners, and this can earn a warning and/or infraction. “Why the hell would you want to a thing like that?” or “You obviously don’t know what you’re doing.” (We have reputation points. Anyone can give any member positive or negative reputation points. A moderator can issue an infraction which is a formal on-the-record warning that stays in your profile forever.)
I’m a senior moderator on a forum run by a commercial computer gaming company.
Mods and senior mods can delete any post, demi-mods cannot. Users can delete their own posts unless they are the first one in a thread (which would delete the whole thread and thus other people’s posts).
Posts are only deleted by mods if seriously off-topic or have incurred an infraction. Toxic posts against the company, its products or developers get deleted for sure, and infractions issued. However constructive criticism of the products or company is fine, even encouraged.
No public discussion or even mention of moderation actions is allowed. Users upset at mod actions are to contact the mod concerned via personal message in the first instance, if not resolved then they can email the forum administrators, whose decision is final.
I’m not surprised that “deleting posts was routine” has the overwhelming majority here, as that’s been my experience on most other boards. But I think the question about “commenting on moderation” would have had a bigger majority for “not allowed” if it had been phrased differently. I can think of sites where moderation policies can and do get discussed; what is expressly forbidden is public criticism of specific moderator actions, which is what we’re really talking about here, and is a feature of this board that I think is relatively rare.