As a general rule, we only edit to break links or to remove excessive material that’s been copied and pasted from another site, for copyright purposes.
We almost never remove threads from public view…except for threads started by spammers. We consider someone who posts multiple times a spammer, as well as someone who posts the same thing on other sites. The Police thread had at least three postings, and the OP was trying to direct traffic to his (or her) own website.
Fair enough - though couldn’t there be some token memorial to the threads passing? Maybe a bunch of flowers or a one-line obituary in the local paper, or perhaps displaying the spammers head on a stake like a medieval traitor’s?
As Lynn and xash have already indicated, the threads or posts are removed from view. They are retained in case they are needed to document the activity of a spammer (for example).
There’s the guy who keeps signing up on this and other forums and posting threads with “the END OF ATHEISM” in the title under different names. Some kind of weird spiel involving the evils of atheism and Nostradamus. He just posted a few threads like that today and got disappeared and banned yet again; I recall one mod comparing it with playing whack-a-mole.
I also saw the “This forum is alive? If yes, please remove this topic and my account” guy/bot post to another forum and reported him there.