I think that might hurt getting new members a lot more than leaving things the status quo. Would just replying and reading be enough for a guest to decide to pony up $15? I would think getting a few questions answered intelligently, probably is more likely to get someone to decide to pay the $15. The short term trolls aren’t too bad and don’t cause too much harm.
I liked the thread too, but it probably would have wound down by now if it had not been removed.
Jim
Let me just add, whenever I’ve removed a sock’s posts, I’ve looked very hard at whether the thread can be salvaged. I understand the disappointment when people post to a thread, and then find it gone. We don’t like to do that, unless we’re forced into it.
Sometimes, of course, just merging posts into a new thread is feasible. Sometimes it’s not, if the posts quoted the vanished sock, or were posted before the initiating post of the new thread.
The logic behind disappearing the posts of a sock or a returning banee is that we don’t want to encourage them. The reality is that we have very few measures that we can take to stop a determined sock-master. We hope that knowing that their work will eventually just disappear will discourage them.
We know that such moderating activities sometimes cause dismay to legitimate, honest, posters. We wish there were some way around it, but we ask you to remember that it’s not us: it’s the jerks.
I do understand. I hope other members do too. For my part in the future, I’ll weigh just how important a topic is to me and whether it’s worth risking what happened. Probably most threads are throw-aways without the sort of research and resource material that the Sgt Pepper thread had. I don’t mind tossing in a quip or two in those if they’re started by a guest. But if a guest starts a thread about an anniversary or achievement like this, we can simply choose not to post in it, and hopefully find an angle that will make for enough difference to open a legitimate thread. I had never known before about the mutual influences between the Beatles and the Beach Boys. It was very interesting stuff. So, if I had it to do over, maybe I could open a thread myself specifically about that. Would that have been okay?
I agree with that (and it’s basically what I said in the post just before yours.) But the links, the narrative — in other words, the information: it’s all gone. It can’t even be searched. Lots of threads have wound down with time, but members still reference them from time to time.
But - everyone else who posted in that thread is presumably not a sock (well, we’d hope…), so it shouldn’t be too much trouble for them to post the same links in a non-sock-started thread? I mean, they found that thread, they’ll find another - IME, Beatles fans in CS are pretty much on the ball.