# Why was "Is there a bottom line to all these “Sovereign citizen” cases?" thread closed? **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [September 20, 2021, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973 "2021-09-20T04:18:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 12:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/41 "2021-09-23T00:05:31Z")
I have the impression that he would have to manually restore each post, individually, from a list of all deleted posts. So if it was a topic with like 600 posts that could be literally hours of monotony. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 12:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/42 "2021-09-23T00:47:07Z")
Ok…again, I said that I understand that it may well be an unreasonable amount of work to recover and restore it. That’s not my concern. My concern is that an entire thread got nuked, including a large number of comments made in good faith by several posters (including me), and rather than making clear to posters who’s posts were cornfielded what exactly happened to them and why, and instead of making even a pro forma apology for the inconvenience, **What\_Exit** seems to be just kind of waving the whole thing off as a non-issue. I’m not up in arms over this, but it does concern me a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 10:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/43 "2021-09-23T10:48:46Z")
> [@Saint\_Cad](#): > > I think it was a mistake. If you want to cornfield a thread started by a troll, it should be done in the first few days. If it is a good thread that has been going on for a while with lots of quality posts, then after a certain point does it matter how it got started? I agree ---
**Author:** ![Max\_S](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/46a35a/32.png) [@Max\_S](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_S)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 2:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/44 "2021-09-23T14:37:51Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > rather than making clear to posters who’s posts were cornfielded what exactly happened to them and why, and instead of making even a pro forma apology for the inconvenience Something that escaped my attention the first read through is that the apology &etc. took place a few hours earlier in the concurrent topic, “Overly-Cornfielding Messages”. **What\_Exit** did link to that topic in his second reply (post #7). **Aspenglow** also stepped in to give some perspective there. **What\_Exit** may have assumed we read that topic as background. ~Max ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/45 "2021-09-23T15:50:13Z")
Is this [post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-middle-class-conservatives-dying-without-life-insurance-and-savings/949788/101) how a sock removal is supposed to work? I don’t think I’ve seen this before. Seems like a poor result if you are trying to erase all traces of a sock. ---
**Author:** ![gdave](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gdave/32/3683_2.png) [@gdave](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gdave)\ **Post date:** [September 23, 2021, 4:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/46 "2021-09-23T16:11:30Z")
In that thread, @What_Exit did acknowledge the mistake and issued an apology for the screw-up _for the “PC Games…” thread_. For the “Is there a…” thread at issue in _this_ thread, all he said was, > [@Overly-Cornfielding Messages?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/overly-cornfielding-messages/950940/5): > > Started by a troll and woken by probably the sock of the troll. That one is gone as it mainly attracts trolls and their socks. Which is less an apology to the good faith posters whose posts got inadvertently cornfielded, and more of a dig at anyone who had participated in that thread. Apparently, I’m either a troll, a sock, or not even worth mentioning. And I also find **What\_Exit** ’s characterization of that thread a bit odd. I don’t know about socks, but I don’t recall any trolling. Of course, I may well be misremembering, and maybe that thread was less interesting and more of a trainwreck than I remember it being, but, of course, there’s no way to check now… ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [September 24, 2021, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/47 "2021-09-24T17:35:27Z")
> [@gdave](#): > > My concern is that an entire thread got nuked, including a large number of comments made in good faith by several posters (including me), and rather than making clear to posters who’s posts were cornfielded what exactly happened to them and why, and instead of making even a pro forma apology for the inconvenience, **What\_Exit** seems to be just kind of waving the whole thing off as a non-issue. I mentioned this upthread. There were a lot of people who put time and effort into that thread and were dismissed out of hand. Just ban the socks and leave all the posts alone. Going thru all that work to get rid of their posts is giving them more attention than just quietly banning them and moving on. And could one of the mods weigh in on this question? Is this [post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-middle-class-conservatives-dying-without-life-insurance-and-savings/949788/101) how a sock removal is supposed to work? I don’t think I’ve seen this before. Seems like a poor result if you are trying to erase all traces of a sock. > [@What\_Exit](#): > > For some reason the other night, in at least 3 threads, using this tool caused the entire thread to be taken for the move and the thread closed and auto-set to delete in 7 days. I don’t know why this happened. It has never happened before and I’ve done this enough times over the past year where if it was likely to happen, it should have before. Thanks for the info. Do I understand correctly that this was being done one thread at a time? Or can you just use Sock Name\>Replies To Sock Name and delete all of the sock’s posts and replies over the whole board? I assume this was reported to Discourse. Any help there? ---
**Author:** ![engineer\_comp\_geek](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/engineer_comp_geek/32/504_2.png) [@engineer\_comp\_geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/engineer_comp_geek)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2021, 2:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/48 "2021-09-25T02:59:29Z")
> [@mordecaiB](#): > > Is this [post](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-middle-class-conservatives-dying-without-life-insurance-and-savings/949788/101) how a sock removal is supposed to work? I don’t think I’ve seen this before. Seems like a poor result if you are trying to erase all traces of a sock. It happens. While we generally remove all traces of socks, there are situations where that removes the reference for a reply, as was done in this case, and this can lead to confusion. If the moderator feels that some explanation is necessary, a note of some sort can be added. I personally don’t like using the del tag like that since I’m not sure how visible or consistent the color is between themes, but we have added plain text mod notes to posts before, and under Discourse we can also add staff notices to posts to explain what happened. I don’t see anything wrong or out of the ordinary here. ---
**Author:** ![mordecaiB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mordecaib/32/7725_2.png) [@mordecaiB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mordecaiB)\ **Post date:** [September 25, 2021, 7:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973/49 "2021-09-25T07:11:28Z")
> [@engineer\_comp\_geek](#): > > I don’t see anything wrong or out of the ordinary here. I didn’t think there was anything wrong but it was out of the ordinary to me since I had never seen that before. So does the “sock post deleted” need to be done manually for each post? That seems to be a lot of work for something that still leaves the name of the sock in each reply. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-was-is-there-a-bottom-line-to-all-these-sovereign-citizen-cases-thread-closed/950973.md?page=2)