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.
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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.
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!
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.)
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.
Thank you for the update!
It’s a particularly egregious case of “fuck you, got mine”
As much as I hate to say itOP,v but when somebody ask a question they are asking for their own personal needs. And community is like this are actually here to serve an individuals questions. If that’s not the point of why you’re here then maybe what you should do is start a new thread world whatever it’s called here that’s called spell posted library or something like that so that way you can create a community fact sheet about how to do things. Why somebody delete stuff who knows people are weirdly private about openly public things. Maybe people feel embarrassed about asking your question or move it. It’s who the hell knows. But in the end it is their threat to ask questions and if you choose not to answer a question and then you don’t have to. However your time that you took to answer their question did not get wasted as they chose to take that advice and run with it. Just because your question now has to be read explain or your answer has to be reacclaimed in another thread doesn’t mean that it wouldn’t have to be explained in another thread anyways. You’re never going to point to this thread or that thread and say the answer was already here the answer was already there. That’s not how communities like this actually work.
Great suggestion. I think you’re both right - until we have such a library as you describe, we should try and keep this as a community resembling one. But a seperate resource actually designed for permanent knowledge hub would be more ideal.
You’re never going to point to this thread or that thread and say the answer was already here the answer was already there. That’s not how communities like this actually work.
This is (presumably) true. I guess another problem with people deleting their stuff is that it’s “bad etiquette” on the poster’s part, as it creates the illusion that less productive exchange is happening on this sub than really is, which then makes visitors less likely to ask for help here. And i guess the OP is hoping that people who need help will do a quick search before posting about their problem.
I’ve never understood why the OP can nuke an entire thread full of comments. Not even reddit is that obtuse.
It happens on reddit all the time as well
No it doesn’t. If someone on Reddit deletes there post, the comments are all still visible.
I haven’t seen the posts (probably from deletion) but Lemmy to me is an invaluable source of smart Linux and selfhosters. Seems like a great place to ask questions for problem to me on the surface. Where should people like me go to if I need help? Genuinely asking
The way I read it is it’s not the asking questions that is the problem at all, it’s the deleting afterwards.
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.
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
That’s even more infuriating than when you used Google to find a thread where someone asks the exact question you have, and there is only one response and it’s someone saying “use Google”.
“use Google”.
It makes me cringe when I see it in a forum. *Imagine you come to a forum designed to help people do <Topic x>, you ask a question, and the response is 'Google exists. Piss off."
The spiritual heir to ‘RTFM’
I’ve lost count of the snarky ‘let me google that for you’ links I’ve found doing niche searches in the pre-AI days.
On reddit they had bots that would automatically repost the content of the post so it couldn’t be deleted.
Ol6oi
People do that? That’s fucked up…
I think I should start checking if a poster has a history of regularly deleting posts/comments, before trying to give a useful answer.
What the hell is the purpose?
I think some people are being a bit of privacy freaks, so they don’t want to leave their data online. I still think its stupid tho cuz Ive posted questions, get a good response but forget after a while. Then when I do go back to remind myself, its deleted.
It’s probably that. I get it. But it still undermines the good will of the community. I’m tempted to delete my original comment for the gag.
Wondering the same thing, maybe they think the information about their private server and network setups will be used against them?
Just go ask an LLM first (ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Mistral/yourselfhostedllm). If it doesn’t know, then come ask here.
Please don’t encourage use of misinformation tools
it never does. never had, never will.
Criticise llm all you want but it’s successfully walked me through some really technical things that I had no idea how to do.
The funny thing Is someone answering the question is probably using a llm.
It’d be helpful to put some links to known good resources for common questions in the e.g. about page.
Also are you suggesting we don’t ask or don’t ask and then delete?
I believe it’s don’t ask then delete.
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
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.
I deleted my post here specifically. it was completely useless to anyone else and 0 chance anyone could find any part of it useful.
I’ve done that a coupla times when I determine that the post itself and the replies provide no value to anyone whatsoever.
I wouldn’t think of removing a post otherwise, if I made an error in OP or came off stupid or sumsuch, I’d edit it for posterity; even when it’s a pile-on downvote bonanza, I wouldn’t think of touching it.
completely useless to anyone else
If you ever get to the point of needing to ask for direction online, always assume it will help someone else, even if it is only 1 other person 10 years later.
It’s just the right thing to do, otherwise it feels like you just want to serve yourself and deleting your post afterwards is kinda saying “only I deserve this information.”
From my own experience, there have been many times where a post somewhere online with barely any interaction has helped me. If that post was deleted before I got a chance to see it then there’s two paths I see:
- I never understood a problem and had to give up, or:
- I found a newer post that someone made on the exact same problem where they or someone else spends another X amount of time trying to solve it.
The more answers to dumb questions online, the better.
You used “I” a lot in that response! You seem to think you have the best idea of what everybody else would find valuable.
What is actually true is stupid, pointless, simple and obvious questions being posted and responded to means other people don’t need to post the same question again.
you can rest assured I know the difference; it was completely useless, I didn’t go “problem solved, let’s nuke the fucker”. I had posts that received a barrage of downvotes and I let 'em be. had posts where the conclusion differed from what was originally intended and I’d let them be as there was value in the resolution. this was none of them things, no chance anyone would find this useful.
Dude you can’t know what I may find useful. Like you literally cannot, even if your IQ is 300, you have zero data on what I need and would find useful.
It doesn’t matter how incredibly smart you are, you can’t know what strangers on the internet need or want.
So you found it useful but no one else well. Ok.
How do you know it was completely useless to anyone else though?
completely useless, 101%, the resolution had dick to do with the subject (so anyone arriving there through search woulda wasted their time) and it had zero to do with the community’s focus, selfhosting.
except maybe to poison LLM output, that could be of use.
So if it resolved it how did it have nothing to do with the subject.
we need to make a list of usernames who are deleting their posts, regularly or even just twice
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.
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.
