Please don’t expect the community to give you answers to your questions which you then delete right afterwards. Those of us who put time into answering your questions are not doing so just to serve your personal needs, we are here to help build a community knowledge base that others can search and reference.

This has become a chronic issue with Lemmy and its starting to feel like it’s a waste of time to answer questions.

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    16 days ago

    It doesn’t make sense, either. There’s no rational reason to delete a thread after the question has been answered.

    Even if it wasn’t actually a person but was an AI agent asking questions so it can scrape the data from the answers, there’s no real utility in deleting the posts after receiving responses. It just seems so weird.

    • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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      16 days ago

      Could they be astroturfing, looking for a specific solution to fill search engines with their own product placement, then deleting because most of the comments are other FOSS solutions?

      • Axolotl@feddit.it
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        15 days ago

        Companies already do it with Reddit, so it’s not surprising, their error is to think that the niche open source federated alternative to reddit would make their bs work

      • solrize@lemmy.ml
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        16 days ago

        It might be to stop the damn notifications you keep getting whenever anyone posts to a thread you started. Also it’s reasonable to think discussion forums are in some sense ephemeral. If you want a persistent store of knowledge, try Wikipedia. Lemmy could also host wikis if it’s worthwhile, like reddit does.

        • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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          16 days ago

          Uncheck “Send notifications to Email” in your settings. Or get a 3rd party app with a notifications setting.

          • solrize@lemmy.ml
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            15 days ago

            I don’t get email notifications, but that number next to the icon changing is annoying. I have a few old responses that I’ve left “unread” on purpose, so I’m reminded to get around to dealing with them (look at some url or whatever). When the number changes, that means there are actual new responses, which after a day or two tend to be useless depending on the topic. So I’d rather shut them off.

              • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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                16 days ago

                How do I do that for just that post? And how do I ignore replies for that post so I didn’t get any other notices?

                • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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                  16 days ago

                  if you don’t want replies, just don’t post. everyone will be better off than if you are deleting posts. actually it’s the easiest thing to do.

                  that being said. are you guilty of deleting your posts after they had discussions? because if so, I’ll just block you because you are taking away value from the community, not adding to it

              • akwd169@sh.itjust.works
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                16 days ago

                Ive never heard anything more logical in my life, and I am a cold unthinking machine running on pure logic

                Checkmate

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              16 days ago

              Your comment isn’t popular, but we all know the rule: “the best thing needs to be the easy thing”, since people will often choose what’s easy and fast vs what’s ultimately better. We see this in security all the time (hello-oo NPM).

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          I have no idea what you are using to browse Lemmy because the only notification I get is a number next to my profile icon in web browser or Thunder. And that’s often delayed by several days so I frequently look through my own old posts to find replies because don’t get reliable notifications.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      Somebody pointed out that the person might be afraid they gave so much info that their post gets de-anonymized - but IMO people afraid of that shouldn’t post on public forums to begin with.

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      16 days ago

      It’s not that complicated. New user gets an answer, feels like the post isn’t relevant anymore, and deletes it without thinking.

      Still a massive dick move, but still.

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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    16 days ago

    I just want to apologize for being the person who asks questions and then doesn’t respond to the comments. I get overwhelmed D: but I’d never delete my post, what’s the purpose in that?

    • Schilling2304@thelemmy.club
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      16 days ago

      Someone may have the same question in the future and there will be answers. You not responding is not that bad but it is even better that you do and provide an update to your situation, if you wish.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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        16 days ago

        Editing original post and including steps which helped would be great. I don’t expect anyone to reply to each an every comment separately, but a summary on what caused the problem and what fixed it would be nice. Specially when someone later finds the post with similar issue.

      • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Someone may have the same question in the future and there will be answers.

        With 8.4 billion people on this planet, I can’t be the only one asking the question.

        • The Stoned Hacker@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          and if everyone who asks that question has that mindset then we end up with no answers longterm.

          its annoying to scroll through 15 threads asking the same thing looking for an answer, but its infinitely worse to find no threads related to what you’re trying to do.

  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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    16 days ago

    we need to make a list of usernames who are deleting their posts, regularly or even just twice

    • buddascrayon@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      Yeah it’s more than likely the same people doing it all the time.

      Edit: either that or AI bots farming information from Lemmy to feed their databases.

    • Passerby6497@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Could this be like the BS we were seeing earlier in the year on one of the meme comms (I think) where users would post something, then delete their account afterwards, nuking the whole thread.

      • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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        15 days ago

        could be, I think when deleting your account there is a checkbox whether to delete all your posts abd comments

  • DundasStation@lemmy.ca
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    16 days ago

    Have you checked the modlogs to see if the posts you’re talking about were deleted by the mods? The mods here seem to really not want this community to be a support community and will delete it under Rule 3.

  • DundasStation@lemmy.ca
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    15 days ago

    Well OP. Looks like your post resulted in a moderator resigning and the appointment of two new moderators in this community. As I’ve said previously, it was a moderator removing posts for a very far stretch interpretation of Rule 3, and not users deleting them after getting the answer.

    Let’s hope this results in a better community for the selfhosters here.

    • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      Let’s hope this results in a better community for the selfhosters here.

      Wow! I just noticed that. Shit moves quickly on the tubes. Welcome our new overlords!

    • netvor@lemmy.world
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      15 days ago

      a moderator removing posts for a very far stretch interpretation of Rule 3

      …stretch by which party? in the sense that the post not really about self-hosting (and OP tried to use rule 3 in a stretched interpretation), or that the post was about self-hosting but moderator applied it in unnecessarily strict way? The way you phrased it seems like the former, but then why would that result in moderator resigning?

      (I’m not a native English speaker so sorry if it should have been clear.)

      • DundasStation@lemmy.ca
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        15 days ago

        To give you some context, I initially made this comment on OP’s post. Then I followed up with this comment after the resignation of a moderator on !selfhosted@lemmy.world.

        I was referring to the former moderator’s very bizarre interpretation of Rule 3. You’ll see in the modlogs that many posts that were clearly about selfhosting getting removed under Rule 3.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
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      16 days ago

      There are a couple of accounts who were doing this regularly for some reason on all sorts of different topics. But I would need to see more evidence of this happening. As someone else mentioned it could be mods or a couple rare cases or all sorts of things.

      • zuana@lemmy.world
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        16 days ago

        Lately in all of the lemmys like each time I go to look at my replies (if I ever get one), the reply, my comment, and the thread are all gone. I’m often thinking it’s mods just nuking threads because of inflammation or whatever.

        • ripcord@lemmy.world
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          16 days ago

          Weird, I see that pretty rarely and is usually because the post broke some rule (offtopic, duplicate, etc)

          • zuana@lemmy.world
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            15 days ago

            Maybe I’m just attracted to rule breaker threads. <3

            Not so much in this Lemmy, other ones really.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
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    15 days ago

    I’ve never understood why the OP can nuke an entire thread full of comments. Not even reddit is that obtuse.

  • gedaliyah@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Yes! This drives me crazy. I will sometimes go back and edit posts to add more info months later.

    We have all been in a situation where we are looking for a very specific answer, and the answer only exists in one obscure forum from a decade ago that has the exact info we are looking for.

    It’s hard enough to ensure lemmy’s long-term fidelity without people axing their own content.

  • irish_link@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    This is the same thing as posting on a forum a question, then saying never mind I figured it out WITHOUT STATING THE ANSWER! When googling shit and coming across this back in the day I would get more mad at those than my issue.

    • Taleya@aussie.zone
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      15 days ago

      Came across that so many fucking times that it’s burned into my psyche. I will go out of my way to list the answer, especially now google is a wet pile of shit technically

  • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    Oh, I thought this was about me since I just asked for file transfer stuff but you’re specifically talking about deleting it right after. It happened to me on asklemmy where the user deleted it right after

    • krypto@lemmy.ml
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      16 days ago

      Asking questions in a public forum (after searching imo) is generally a positive thing. Answers are then public and the next person with the question can find the answer. That sort of behaviour should be encouraged, and no one will ever complain about it imo.

  • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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    16 days ago

    I haven’t noticed many posts deleted by the user themselves. I see a lot of ‘deleted by user’ comments. I try to remember to put [SOLVED] on any serious post I make, after the fact. That way, someone searching can cross-moginate whatever their issues are with what solved the issue for me. Maybe the user deleting the post once it was solved is embarrassed they asked a supposedly ‘stupid’ question?

    • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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      16 days ago

      that will help somewhat in the future when lemmy gets its shit together, but since I came to lemmy deleted posts cannot be loaded at all, even though the server still has the comments

  • Taleya@aussie.zone
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    15 days ago

    It’s a particularly egregious case of “fuck you, got mine”