Dear Fodors: -- do you really delete threads?
 

I have only had the pleasure of this site for a few months, and already have had wonderful help from some wonderful posters. But recently I have read of posts talking of the deletion of threads, etc., when they got personal or controversial (or, it is suggested, not Fodors' politics). And, in fact, it appears that thread has now disappeared. So here's my letter to Fodors: While as a Francophile and Italiaphile (word?) and all that implies politically, I for one would rather see everything left as it is than wonder who deletes what and why (I'm not talking about porno here but disagreements).

You really didn't need to post this. Go to the home page and it will completely explain the policy. While it may be difficult to determine when a thread has crossed over the line in being the things that it says are forbidden, I personally feel that usually the threads have deteriorated far more that they need to, to meet the requirements of best being deleted.

I agree w/ Patrick. Most threads that have been deleted have gone well beyond their sell-by date and should have been deleted sooner.

Of course there is the odd exception where they may have gone overboard -- but Fodors actually deletes very few threads. I sometimes wish they would nuke more . . . . . .

Next time you would like to send a message to Fodors, email [email protected]

They might be able to do more than we can.
I think the Editors have a huge amount of patience, given the amount of posters there and not all of them well behaved.
But then, we muddle along pretty well, don't we ? :)
I've been muddling along here for 3 years now~ Happy Anniversary to me~

Hi dee, and welcome!

Scarlett is correct. Any comments to the fodors editors will not be recognized on this forum. You must email them directly.

If there is a thread you want to keep for reference, or information that you want to be sure you have, I suggest you copy it and save it to a word file. You never know when a thread may go unexpectedly astray and disappear.

Threads do not generally get deleted because of disagreements between posters. They get deleted because someone becomes offensive, nasty, mean, or because the subject matter gets too far removed from the subject of travel, e.g., foaming-at-the-mouth politics. (I'm afraid we can expect a lot more of that as we approach the November election.)

There are many, MANY threads that have virtually nothing to do with travel that do not get deleted (I wonder if the one about Julia Child's death is still with us??????).

If they deleted all the posts which are "mean and nasty" then they'd also have to delete all the posts that are "dumb and stupid" as well as those that are "pompous and self-righteous" etc., etc., and the defintions of those subjective terms could be the subject of a whole new post/conversation.

Take what you can from the posts and be glad that the thing hasn't self-destructed and ignore what you find irrelevant.

I think that sometimes they just delete certain items in a thread, those that are, in a word, ill-mannered. Other times they delete the whole thread. I don't think that they delete threads that disagree with their own politics; but rather they delete threads that are concerned with politics rather than travel. While I haven't seen all threads that have been deleted, those I have seen certainly deserved deletion.