An IMHO thread has been moved out of our site. Why? What can be so dangerous that we should not be allowed to read it? If the thread discusses illegal actions, then it can be closed. If it contains offensive links, the links can be deleted. The guy was asking if he should fire a good worker because of an off-hours conversation in which the worker revealed he got his diploma from a diploma mill. I can see it going to The Pit. Or Great Debates. But to hide it from us? What’s up with that?
I was just about to respond to that thread. If you click on the OP’s name, you’ll see he was banned. Probably a sock puppet or something, but I don’t think it was for the thread’s subject matter.
Threads by socks are deleted. But this one was hidden. Seems a bit queer to me.
There was a companion thread in a different forum with a different story; same web site. It was spam.
I guess I don’t understand then. What does it mean to “hide” a thread? I don’t think I’ve seen that before.
(Ok, I know I couldn’t have seen it, but you know what I mean)
It didn’t look like spam. Someone put some effort into it. It didn’t say, ‘Hey! Click here!’ That’s pretty sneaky.
So why hide the thread instead of just deleting it?
A deleted thread would have ‘Deleted thread’ (or something) where the thread was. This one said it was moved. Clicking on the title brings up a ‘You are not authorised’ page.
There was a lot of effort put into the posts. They were good stories. Perhaps that person should write instead of touting web sites.
Standard procedure with spam is to move the thread(s), and to ban the spammer. We almost never delete threads; the only times I do it are for duplicates.
I was wondering when someone was going to catch that. Yeah, that spammer must really love his work to write two posts like that just to advertise his website.
This is the first time I’ve seen it. In the past I’ve seen threads locked (with links deleted) or they’d be deleted (accompanied by threads such as this one, where it is explained that the OP was a sock).
Maybe I just never opened those threads.
A number of the Teeming Millions caught that. There are some awful sharp people that hang out here.
Johnny L.A., I just figured out why you kept mentioning the moving. We have two options, to move a thread with a redirect, or without. I’m going to try to fix it now, so that everyone will think you were seeing things! 
Ha! Everybody already knows I’m insane! ‘Ha!’ I say, ‘Ha!’
Mods have several options when dealing with unwanted posts and threads. They can Soft Delete it, which does not erase it but prevents it from being displayed with the other posts. They can Hard Delete it, which actually removes it from the database.
These two methods have the option of showing a Placeholder-- “This Post Deleted By XXXX on YYYYY because of ZZZZZ”. Admin will always see that there used to be a thread there, but the Members may or may not, depending on whether a Placeholder has been set. This sometimes causes some confusion.
The Mods can also move a thread to the correct forum, which is the most common action. Or they can move it to a non-Public forum, from which it cannot be seen by anyone who does not have access to that forum.
You would hide a post by deleting it and not setting a Placeholder. Staff would see the generic placeholder, but the Members would see nothing.
In the case of Moves, a Redirect can be set to show that the thread exists, but it is now somewhere else (we’ve all seen the redirect icon). If it’s been moved to a non-Public forum, clicking the redirect will bring up a “You don’t have permission to view this” message.
You would hide a thread by moving it to a non-Public forum without setting a Redirect. It would just look like the thread had vanished.
Posts can also be Split from a thread into a new thread. Multiple threads can be Merged into a single one. Almost anything can be copied from one place to another.
Additionally, actions against users can affect posts and threads-- if a username is deleted, then his or her posts generally disappear too, though many configurations allow the posts to remain under a generic “Guest” username or under the original username in plain text (not linked to a profile) . Deleting the OP of any thread used to delete the entire thread, but I think that’s optional now.
So… there are a lot of options.
We prefer to remove spammer posts from public view while retaining them in the database; sometimes it’s “Hey, haven’t we seen this before?” and yes indeed, we have.
Why remove them from public view? Spammers don’t deserve house room.
It’s not being sneaky (thanks for the characterization, nice to know we have your trust), it’s how we do things and have done things for quite a while. I’m sure you’d just as soon not have the board cluttered up with this kind of crap.
TubaDiva
You’re misunderstanding, Tuba. Johnny L.A. meant the spammer was being sneaky.
Johnny L.A.? Who cares what he thinks? He’s nuts! Delusional, too, from the look of things. 
I’m feeling much better now.
The spammer? Yeah, we’ve had a rash of that kind of thing, haven’t we? They’re taking a page from the “stealth marketers.”
TubaDiva
Well, you just keep calm, and keep telling yourself that. There’s a good boy! 
I must be clueless, as I didn’t recognize this as spam. But then again, I didn’t click on the link, so he didn’t get anything out of me.