Whoops
Posted on February 9, 2014 Posted by John Scalzi 13 Comments
So, uh, I may have accidentally deleted a bunch of comments from earlier today while dealing with a spam flood. So if you notice a comment you made suddenly having gone missing, it’s not that you were being moderated, it’s that I flubbed. Sorry. You can repost if you like.
Even the spammer can repost?
Please don’t delete this comment, it’s my favorite!
This comment has been deleted by the administrator of this site.
Some of the comments you deleted were from yesterday, I know a comment I wrote yesterday is now gone along with another 5-10 on the Meg Meyers post. For the record, just because my email is at a “spam” subdomain, it doesn’t mean that I send spam from it, but someone mailing to it will get placed in my default spam folder.
JS–
I had previously posted a criticism of you for taking on a business venture with a Fox subsidiary/company (FX). Was that deleted as part of this snafu or for other reasons. I do not want to re-post if it was deleted intentionally.
Dude, you were supposed to “accidentally” delete my obnoxious opinionated rants, not my laconic snarks.
It’s a shame this excuse doesn’t work with your Tax Return.
So you swung the Mallet, and missed?
Mal(let)ware…?
This is unfortunate. I woke up from an alcoholic blackout last night to find a note saying “Don’t forget! Left comment describing where the money is buried on Scazli’s blog!”
Damn.
dpmaine, since JS hasn’t answered, I’ll tell you what I’ve observed.
If a comment is on topic and reasonably civil, but annoying, JS will generally reply to it.
If it’s off topic or uncivil or otherwise unacceptable (“Editing! Gerunds! Death!”), in my experience he generally replaces the text with an explanation of why he deleted it, usually in brackets and starting with “Deleted for.” The box with the person’s name is left standing.
If a comment is REALLY offensive, the text will be replaced with something about kittens.
I have yet to see a legitimate comment, or even a horrible racist rant, vanish completely, leaving no trace (that is, if it’s happened here, it happened before I saw the comment/rant). That appears to be reserved for outright spam.
NB: this is purely observational and descriptive. JS could change any of this at any time. And there may be data I’ve missed.
To amplify Xopher’s comment, when I (intentionally) delete something, I generally leave behind a note explaining why.
dpmaine: I didn’t see the comment you note prior to its deletion. I can, however, guarantee you that if you were complaining that I’m happy to take money from the same company that owns Fox News, you would get an eyeroll from me at the very most, and then I would ignore you. So if indeed that was your comment, you can go ahead and skip it.
JS – Got it. I wasn’t sure if you ever actually completely removed posts or just modifed them. Thanks for the clarification.