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.

  • chunes@lemmy.world
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    59 minutes ago

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

  • happydoors@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    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

    • username123@sh.itjust.works
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      38 minutes ago

      The way I read it is it’s not the asking questions that is the problem at all, it’s the deleting afterwards.

  • irish_link@lemmy.world
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    3 hours 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.

    • foo@feddit.uk
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      1 hour ago

      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”.

      • ExperimentalGuy@programming.dev
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        2 hours ago

        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.

        • modus@lemmy.world
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          3 minutes ago

          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.

      • OpenPassageways@lemmy.zip
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        2 hours ago

        Wondering the same thing, maybe they think the information about their private server and network setups will be used against them?

  • Gonzako@lemmy.world
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    12 hours 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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      6 hours 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.

  • WhyJiffie@sh.itjust.works
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    14 hours 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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      8 hours 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.

  • Dharma Curious (he/him)@slrpnk.net
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    16 hours 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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      14 hours 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.

      • irmadlad@lemmy.world
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        4 hours 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.

        • foo@feddit.uk
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          55 minutes ago

          For technical issues I’ve come to the conclusion that if there are no other people asking the same question, then I need to re-think my approach, because I’m probably doing something silly.

        • The Stoned Hacker@lemmy.world
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          3 hours 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.

      • IsoKiero@sopuli.xyz
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        13 hours 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.

  • Trilogy3452@lemmy.world
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    12 hours ago

    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?

    • OpenAltFinder@lemmy.world
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      11 hours ago

      It’s just another type of advertising to them. Ask a question trying to solve a problem, then use your alt account to shill your own solution.

      • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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        10 hours ago

        Doesn’t work that way on lemmy: if they delete the post, then the alt’s shilling disappears, too.

          • rumba@lemmy.zip
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            3 hours ago

            I’m not against it, post something it the wrong place, or during a bender. Would be kinda cool if lemmy tracked user starts on deletes like it does on posts and comments

            • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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              3 hours ago

              I’m still undecided about their own text (deleting comments or post text disrupts the conversation but there’s valid reasons), but I don’t think the OP of a thread should have any control over the existence of that full comment thread.

              • rumba@lemmy.zip
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                2 hours ago

                Maybe some form of engagement or time limit would serve. If the post is empty or low engagement and less than 2 days old, it can go. After that it’s up to mod?

                • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
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                  2 hours ago

                  Or just do it like reddit did, where you can delete your post content and remove your username from it, but the thread and comments remain.

                  Though with how the fediverse works, it’s possible to spin up a custom instance that highlights deleted content instead of deleting it, meaning the attempt to get rid of it can be what brings it more attention if anyone has decided to do it. Just like with vote identities, they aren’t anonymous and there are instances/sites that just show who voted for what.

        • OpenAltFinder@lemmy.world
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          5 hours ago

          I think it’s more so that they can post the same thing frequently, hoping that it gets burned into peoples’ brains.

    • kent_eh@lemmy.ca
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      14 hours ago

      I don’t get it either, but it was also a big problem on Reddit for years.

      • OpenAltFinder@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        On Reddit especially, it usually was people asking a question, then having their alt account respond with whatever they were trying to shill, and just doing that over and over again.

    • atoro@lemmy.ml
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      4 hours ago

      Just glanced at it, but noticed a user (ayyy) was temp banned here 24 days ago for apparently telling a user to kys, then appointed mod here 45 minutes ago.

      Wat?

    • imetators@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      8 hours ago

      I don’t get it why would selfhosting-related hardware questions be irrelevant? If we are talking about 14tb drives having weird behaviour, I’d say this is the right place to ask.

    • mlg@lemmy.world
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      14 hours ago

      https://lemmy.world/post/39025760

      wtf? Half the post is nuked even after being locked. I don’t even see how such a small community can be so stuck up about relevancy and purity washing selfhosted as if we all own our own DNS registrars and can do outbound SMTP.

    • JackbyDev@programming.dev
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      14 hours ago

      It’s a major pet peeve of mind when places get overly zealous about moderating what is on or off topic when the volume of posts doesn’t warrant it. Especially when there has already been some discussion on the posts.

        • Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca
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          17 hours ago

          Wow crazy I couldn’t imagine that this community gets enough posts to warrant so aggressively enforcing rules about the content.

          • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksM
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            16 hours ago

            Some people think that keeping a community laser focused attracts more readers through quality. It’s an ideal that I respect, but I’ve never really observed that to be true in reality.

            If you’re reading this @[email protected] consider this my polite feedback that I completely get what you’re trying to accomplish but you might be working harder than you need to be.

            • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusM
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              7 hours ago

              @[email protected] Just to add, I would say working to the detriment of the community through the deletions.

              Locking would make more sense, along with redirecting to specific communities that you feel would be more relevant.

              As I see it, I think people post here for what could be considered tangential because it is more popular than similar communities. I think this very post shows that the users have been perfectly fine with the posts being made, and are bothered by the information (effectively) disappearing with deletions.

              If the mod team does not want those sort of posts here, of course thats fine. But it is kind of shitty to delete them, especially with so much interaction already there. I’d encourage locking them and redirecting through a mod comment instead. If you can’t think of a more appropriate community for them, its likely they can’t either, which is why they posted here in the first place.

              Just my 2¢.

                • curbstickle@anarchist.nexusM
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                  2 hours ago

                  Considering your application of the rules, I really dont think thats what you want. Unless you want me to go ahead and restore posts that (like other users per this thread) seem relevant enough to be here.

                  Quite a response to “here’s a way this could work better for everyone”, too.

                  But if its what you want, sure, I’ll do it.

                  Edit: to be clear, I’d like you to confirm this is really what you want.

          • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
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            16 hours ago

            Exactly, I could understand it on the huge subreddits with one question per minute, but here is so silent…

            Plus, as a user, when a mod deletes a post that I took over ten minutes to write, I go “fuck It” and stop contributing altogether (this also includes replying to other posts)

  • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    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.

    • Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.world
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      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.

    • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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      1 day 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?

      • solrize@lemmy.ml
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        24 hours 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.

        • uuj8za@piefed.social
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          23 hours ago

          Also it’s reasonable to think discussion forums are in some sense ephemeral

          This is 100% wrong. This isn’t Discord or chat. People expect forums to appear in online search results, i.e. be persistent.

        • nieceandtows@programming.dev
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          10 hours ago

          Sure, that’s why Google made an exclusivity deal with wikipedia instead of reddit to train their ai for any organic user level reviews/discussions on anything.

        • tburkhol@slrpnk.net
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          24 hours 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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            14 minutes 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.

              • akwd169@sh.itjust.works
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                6 hours ago

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

                Checkmate

            • Snot Flickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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              22 hours ago

              How is it easier to delete a post every time than to set preferences to not be emailed just once, then you never have to again?

              • atzanteol@sh.itjust.works
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                22 hours 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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                  13 hours 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

            • corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca
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              22 hours 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).

        • dieTasse@feddit.org
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          24 hours ago

          I don’t think most people think of this to be ephemeral. First of all, this replaces reddit and we all know how valuable reddit was when searching for issues. Second of all, this is also kind of like forum, and not many people would think of a forum to be ephemeral. Not everything save-worthy has to be wikipedia kind of stuff.

        • Blue_Morpho@lemmy.world
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          23 hours 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.

            • terabyterex@lemmy.world
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              17 hours ago

              i had to lookup what the acronym csam meant… c’mon - you know what i mean. i am talking about words, the context of the conversation. but to your first point, if a post had misinformation, backing that up so historians can see and have evidence of the behavior of this time. You can flag it but i think there is a lot of history that is washed away.

              but no - i dont mean illegal pictures of children - this post was about deleting help posts.

    • Lka1988@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      22 hours 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.