Hi, I just wondered if the "Administration" might advise us which (if any) threads have been deleted from this forum (and/or its archive). Cheers, Neil Hynd
To my knowledge, we've not deleted any threads. We have deleted individual messages within threads when they violated our terms of service (i.e., personal attacks, blatant advertisements, occasional Factwatcher spam, etc.) And we may have deleted single-message threads for the same reasons. We don't specifically track message deletions, so I'm unable to tell you which messages have been removed, other than they all violated the TOS. However, the admins do communicate about moderation issues so we can all attempt to maintain consistency in our moderation policy. If you have any other questions about moderation, I'd prefer it if you'd take them to private email ([email protected]). Thanks Chip Administrator
I think that I know what Neil is talking about. Recently on another thread I responded to a post by Dr. Bernard Leeman. I thought that the gentleman was the same individual who had posted earlier about starting an Afghani womans' university. So I went to that 'search' function and looked for other posts by Dr. Leeman. Two came up, but neither were the ones I was looking for. I tried to search by phrase, but nothing came up. At that point I had the same thought as Neil, and couldn't for the life of me see why those earlier threads would be deleted by the moderators. And my memory isn't that bad. So I physically looked at the old screens and there the threads were. So it seems that the 'search' function doesn't see all the threads, even if you ask it to go all the way back.
This might also explain a couple of my experiences. I assumed (apparently incorrectly) that the old posts had been deleted for some reason after the thread had become inactive.
Originally posted by Neil Hynd: I just wondered if the "Administration" might advise us which (if any) threads have been deleted from this forum (and/or its archive). There have been at least two threads deleted, Neil. One deleted thread was titled, "DWCox and Rich Douglas Are Boneheads". This thread was the response to a prior thread, which also happens to be the next thread to be deleted from the board, titled (verbatim), "H. Piper, DART12/Jeff623 are one in the same". Hope this helps. (I'm guessing you are trying to calculate the correct number of actual threads so you can lay claim to thread #1000, or maybe post #10,000, or both?)
Hi Chip, I have no problem with private communications, but perhaps some things are also better aired transparently and in the open - for example "search" problems. The thread I still cannot find (by search or by listing all postings) is one that I started on 8th April, renamed by Tom to "Bears' Guide". I have a printed list of 7 entries at that date, but I know that others were made later. Perhaps you could illuminate ? Cheers, Neil
That thread can be found at http://www.degreeinfo.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000486.html ------------------ Bill Gossett
Chip, I have reported earlier that embedded text search are not yielding the requested result. I think there is a problem in the search engine. I tried to look for one of my threads posted earlier using the name of a person and the query result came "no records available". I managed to find the thread manually. Thanks, Eli
Chip, I have reported earlier that embedded text search are not yielding the requested result. I think there is a problem in the search engine. I tried to look for one of my threads posted earlier using the name of a person and the query result came "no records available". I managed to find the thread manually. Thanks, Eli
Yes, there is apparently a problem with the search engine -- or, more specifically, the index files. Today, I ran the index maintenance routine on the server, which is supposed to rebuild the index completely. Unfortunately, the operation failed and gave an internal error, which most likely means that one thread somewhere is corrupted, thus preventing the index file from being written. I will look further into this problem when I have a liitle time. It shouldn't be that difficult to fix. I apologize for the inconvenience. Chip
Dear all, I could have sworn that some threads are missing...or maybe I'm just too buzzed. Where in the world is the Frederick Taylor thread? Byran
Or the Kennedy-Western's thread that featured one Omran defending the school's Ph.D. programs. Please moderators, we need answers. Ike
Byran is right. I think we should be told. (With apologies to the UK's "Private Eye" magazine). Cheers, Neil
What is the point of advising a poster to search for a topic that has already been discussed when the topic in question may have been deleted? I searched for Fredrick Taylor University, the search engine found the thread but when I click on the thread, I got an error. What is so controversial about the thread that prompted the moderators to delete it? It is better to delete specific comments or posts that are controversial than to delete an entire thread. Now I understand why Dr. Levicoff has reservations about moderated news groups. Anyway, I will still hang around here because it is by far better than AED. In short, AED is dead. Ike
AS I STATED ABOVE, there is currently a problem with the indexing that returns search results. An attempt to rebuild the indexes and fix the problem has generated an error that isn't documented in the software documentation. We HAVE NOT deleted the thread on Frederick Taylor University, nor any other threads other than those that were exclusively or primarily in the realm of flames or personal attacks. Keep in mind that this *is* a free and all-volunteer run forum. There are about 5 people that invest a lot of time into keeping it running and ensuring that content is spam and flame free. When problems such as this arise, they get taken care of as someone (in this case, me) has time to work on it. I would appreciate it if folks would quit trying to make this into some sort of big deal or implying that somebody isn't telling somebody else something about secret deleted messages... it just isn't happening. Please take the problem at for what it is -- a technical glitch that is temporarily making searching difficult. Thanks Chip
I'll try to clarify things for the technically uninitiated. Before that though I must state that I'm familiar with text search programs in general and not with the specific engine being used by degreeinfo. The way text searches generally work is that the text articles are input into an indexing utility that builds an inverted positional index. It's logically very similiar to the index at the back of a book. All places where a word is accessed is recorded and that recording includes pointers back to the articles that contained that word. Well the indexing utility is bombing out. As Chip indicated this is possibly due to some kind of technical corruption in the format of the data that the indexing utility is trying to access. This means that all the talk about sinister political motivations to hide or delete articles is just talk and the real problem is just a much more boring technical problem. If you are bothered by this then just remember that you get what you pay for. I will therefore make my payment now. Chip, thank you so so much for the time and effort that you are putting into degreeInfo. I really appreciate it.
Let me echo the other sentiments and say that I really appreciate the efforts of the moderators. This beats the heck out of the deteriorated version of aed. Many thanks!!!! North
