A good amount of threads recently have been started by socks/trolls/whoever, and so had their OP’s deleted while (often) the thread continues on. This often means confusion as whoever posted 2nd may be cited as the OP, and relevant information as to the nature of the thread may be lost. So, I have a suggestion.
When the OP is deleted, replace the old OP with one under a different account (for example, “Placeholder”) that’s maintained by the mods. A small point could be added to let people know the original OP was deleted (at least until people got the idea). An example (using myself so no one gets mad) would be:
Would become:
That way the OP remains, and the thread is not as confusing. It would mean slightly more work for the mods, but if it’s a long OP, it could just be cut and pasted by them. Obviously whether or not to keep the OP would be a judgement of the mod’s, but if it was rule-breaking then the thread would be closed anyway. This suggestion would be for threads that are continuing and in which the OP broke no rule other than being a sock (that is, no rule breaking in that post).
Valid suggestion. However, we are not permitted to edit any post, and vB has no feature to add a place holder post. Besides, re-posting the OP under a different name would defeat the purpose of deleting the OP in the first place.
The best we could do with your suggestion is to add a mod note (below the post, where you usually see something like “reason: fixed coding.” to post #2 stating that the OP has been deleted.
That’s my view. Other mods might have different suggestions.
