The first one is about comment deletion. Graham used to replace deleted the body comments with something along the lines of "[i deleted this because...]". As one stage he justified this with words along the lines of "the carcass serves to deter others from doing the same thing". I am not sure if worked like that. The biggest offenders seem to the animal rights people, and if anything leaving carcasses around seemed to whip them up into even a bigger frenzy. (While there is an element of truth to this I couldn't resist the pun - sorry.)

It may not of acted as a deterrent, but it was great way of making the OLO's moderation decisions open and transparent. In an forum where accusations of bias seem to crop up regularly, that seems important. It also meant if there were gaps in the thread you could see why, and it means you could see how much of an a...hole someone was by looking at their comment history. I would like to see it brought back.

The second request has to do with the "send me an email notification whenever someone posts a follow-up comment to this discussion". Does anybody intentionally not tick this thing? I would like to see it do default to checked, or even better move it to a global in your profile, or some other compromise that meant I didn't have to always click it.

Third, on Christmas 2005 Graham wrote an article on a poll of OLO's forum posters. It turned out to be quite the Christmas gift as it uniquely for OLO generated mostly (only?) feel good comments. Graham, would you consider doing it again? And if you do, could you add at least one more question, something along the lines of:

If OLO had a Christmas / New Year get together, I would prefer to:

(1) Hide in my miserable hole and ignore it.
(2) Attend a free byo everything bbq on Mt Coot-tha.
(3) Pay $xx to attend [address] at the [venue] for a [meal/bbq/...].
(4) ...

Yes, I'd like to know when offending comments are deleted, but maybe it's just a curiosity thing as much as anything. I agree it would help make sense of the thread, not that I've ever noticed a gap in a thread that led me to think a poster's comment might have been deleted, but then again I'm not usually alert to that sort of thing.

I did push a volatile poster a little too far once a few years back. The only way I knew I had was when I read the editorial insert following my post stating 'Deleted for flaming'. In one way I appreciated the protection but I also felt a little cheated! I do think it was good to have that deletion on the public record just the same.

CJ was censored recently, which I'm only aware of because he mentioned it on his way out. I think it involved BD but I'm only guessing. It's not my business I know, but knowing where the deletions occurred would be interesting I think. Are posters banned each time they have a comment censored, or just after a certain number? Guess it's all explained somewhere if I bothered to look.

Yes, I wouldn't mind a repeat along the lines of Graham's Christmas thread. He has since started a general discussion thread which also generated similar feel good responses. I think it was about a year ago but someone else might know.

Just made a quick revisit to the '05 thread and I see you've either changed your name or you didn't actually contribute. You're not Scout, SHONGA or sneekeepete reincarnated are you by any chance? It would be good to see a few of those old names return.

Gee, do some posts get deleted? Shows you how alert I am to gaps!

I say this, because I've at times wondered why a particular poster has been allowed to continue posting though not actually participating in the debate as such only ranting about feminists: like HRS.

Certainly I think it should be public when a comment has been deleted. It serves as a reminder that a modicum of courtesy remains required.

And what's this about a feel good Christmas thread? Sounds great.

rstuart, wouldn't a default to email notification be great. Can't tell you the number of times I've come up with some sharp insight, posted it and forgot to click the email notification button. It's horrible when remembering days later when the glory is all but faded!

Graham, please, when posting a comment automatic email notification. If not wanted this can easily be cancelled afterwards.

I agree rstuart that there should definitely be a note from the moderator in place of any deleted post, to let us know that a post has been deleted, why it was deleted and who wrote it.

Having email alerts as a default position sounds sensible.

The other thing that I would really like to see is a facility for pulling a post off the forum once you have posted it so that it can be modified, within a short timeframe of say 15 minutes after posting.

If I had a dollar for ever post that I’ve put up that has silly little grammatical errors, a missing conjunction (a, the, and), just one letter out of place that changes a word (or instead of of, is instead of it) or makes it look as though you don't know how to spell (week instead weak), I’d be a thousand or so dollars richer!

I strive as hard as I can to make posts word-perfect. Read, re-read, re-re-re-re-re-re-re-read. Then post and read again… and……… .aaaaaarrrgghhh…swear copiously, bang fist on table, threaten to throw ‘puter out window!

At least 50% of the time there just has to be some piffling but totally enraging little cock-up.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRGGGHHHHH!!

I don’t believe it. I DO NOT BELIEVE IT !! !! !!

Week instead OF weak!

| : > (

And yes, there is yet another chunderous little blunder, which I managed to read over, at least 30 times, with the specific intent each time of finding just this sort of wanky little typo.

"If I had a dollar for EVERY post...."

When I saw it I thought; oh here we go, Graham or Susan are playing silly-buggers! But sure enough, it is present in the word docco that I copy and paste my posts from!

Hwaaaaaaww

(now Ludwig, in light of your increasing brain decay and enormous stressload incurred over the most piddly little things, you need to very carefully read over the post, about 20 times. Then go and have a nice cup of tea and a good lie down and come back and read it another 20 times. Then get a couple of other people to proof-read it. And then cut and paste it into OLO....and preview the comment another 35 times! Then maybe, just maybe, you'll be able to post it without any errors.............maybe.............unlikely, but just maybe. Of course you could always just choose to not be bothered at all about it. Afterall, every other poster, bar none, suffers the same sort of thing. But yes... how nice it would be to be able to fix up these little blemishes after the post has been submitted. I'm sure you are not the only one by a long way who would appreciate that facility)