Threads deleted: give a notice to posters

[RobertoBozzolo]

Last Friday I replied to a question in the CVI board, but at some moment in the weekend the discussion was deleted for some unknown reason. I knw it was not the most appealing question I've seen, but it seemed legitimate to me.

I'm not questioning on the reason for deletion, but it would be nice if the posters in the discussion are advised. Maybe adding some explanation for this event.

The main reason I can imagine for deleting an entire discussion is the eternal fight against spammers and trolls (I personally have notified several of them to mods, trying to help keeping this forum clean), but I didn't get any symptom in the original question, so... why?

Above all, I could learn something new about how to recognize undesirable posts.

FYI, this is the link to the original discussion (which of course now ends up in a Page Error warning):

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Help-regarding-Lab-windows-CVI/m-p/4380255#M91530

[tst · Accepted solution]

That specific post was by a new user and had a link at the end to an external site, so I guess that's why it was judged to be spam. I haven't looked at that site, but I suspect it is spam.

As for recognizing spam, that can be tricky these days, with the rise of tools like ChatGPT. Sometimes people use it to generate convincing text and sometimes it's not convincing, but it's hard to tell whether it's artificial intelligence or natural... hmm... uhh... let's go with "ignorance". Some users just don't know anything about the material or about how to phrase a question clearly and effectively.

I personally try to be conservative when banning and not ban unless it's fairly clearly spam. That's the mandate I was given when I was given moderator privileges about a decade ago and I aim to stick to it.

As far as informing the other users in the thread, some of the moderation tools should do this (for example, a manual move of a message or a thread), but I guess a ban doesn't. It's probably not a bad idea to inform the other posters.

[RobertoBozzolo]

Thanks tst for informing me. I didn't noticed the link, otherwise I would have tried to investigate a bit before answering. You're right: the question itself often doesn't offer any clue as to whether it is legitimate or not: sometimes I smell something wrong and eventually I end up finding the exact sentence elsewhere, but in this particular case it seemed to adhere to the CVI-environment/novice-user pattern so I decided to answer. Anyway, thanks again for taking time to answer my doubts and keep on maintaining this forum clean!

[markwni]

To follow up on @tst's post, the other reason a post can get deleted is a user request, often for privacy reasons. In those cases, we would not inform everyone in the thread.

If we do remove a post for a non-spam or non-privacy reason, we do try to connect with authors.

Thanks!

Mark

[RobertoBozzolo]

Another discussion has disappeared withouot notice, and this time I'm almost sure there wasn't any spam stuff:

UI Engineering: How to Balance Performance and aesthetics 

That thread was an interesting discussion about performance of applications developed in CVI and was hosting some answers from long-term CVI users.

<edit>

As an interesting notice, that discussion is not present in my subscriptions and my message there is not listed in "most recent messages" section of my profile, while answers to my post are listed in the notification feed

</edit>

[tst]

Looks like Altenbach is the one who marked it as spam, so I guess he'll have to give more details. The original post does look pretty worthless (it does not look like an actual user asking an actual question about CVI and is probably just there so that the thread looks legitimate and the user can add a spam link later), but I don't know where the rest of the thread went. Some moderation actions give the moderator the option to choose what happens with the other posts in the thread and I guess it's possible that certain actions can also remove them without asking.

[markwni]

I'll let @altenbach respond on that particular piece, but I suspect it's what we've been seeing - bad actors post copied items from reddit, other social media platforms, or old posts on the community and then they come back and use them as spam pots either through their profile or through a link added later. 

The larger answer is we almost never remove anything outside of spam or a privacy request. In those cases, we either cannot, or the tools do not allow us to, notify respondents. So, if something disappears, assume they were up to no good, even if the thread/question started well. Spammers and other bad actors are clever. 

[altenbach]

That same user came back two days later and posted a very long 100% pure spam post with tons of links to gambling sites (also reported, of course). It became clear that these other posts were fake, copied from elsewhere or AI generated, and just served as camouflage. These questions were very vague and general.

(If there was real value to the rest of the discussion, a moderator can restore it, of course. Chances are that most of it already has been discussed elsewhere)

[RobertoBozzolo]

Whoa! It's becoming more and more difficult to discriminate the poor real users asking for help from fake posters!

I just got one of them (fakers) reusing a question posted on reddit in 2022 😳

(already notified to moderators)

[JÞB]

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@RobertoBozzolo wrote:

Last Friday I replied to a question in the CVI board, but at some moment in the weekend the discussion was deleted for some unknown reason. I knw it was not the most appealing question I've seen, but it seemed legitimate to me.

I'm not questioning on the reason for deletion, but it would be nice if the posters in the discussion are advised. Maybe adding some explanation for this event.

The main reason I can imagine for deleting an entire discussion is the eternal fight against spammers and trolls (I personally have notified several of them to mods, trying to help keeping this forum clean), but I didn't get any symptom in the original question, so... why?

Above all, I could learn something new about how to recognize undesirable posts.

FYI, this is the link to the original discussion (which of course now ends up in a Page Error warning):

https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabWindows-CVI/Help-regarding-Lab-windows-CVI/m-p/4380255#M91530

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As our Zealot of CVI,  ( I believe you are the only member to reach that mark) perhaps you could be invited into the Round Table.. .... 

That is if NI STILL considers LabWindows with more than royalties from MICROSOFT 

Just a few more posts and you'll see.