Why do threads suddenly disappear, are mutilated or left unharmed?
 

I have noticed that some threads, simply disappear. Not that they contain any slander, inflamatory remarks or such, they just disappear.<BR>Then, one finds other threads that are edited<BR>(mutilated).<BR>Then one finds threads that are really offensive and aggravating. And those are left intact.<BR>Then one finds the "troll posts". I found one that was completely out of context "Is Rome worth seeing?" <BR>What kind of censorship is this???

Sporadic, whimsical & capricious?

Just curious. <BR>Some of the threads were very informative. There was one on cruises that completely disappered.<BR>There are others that make no sense at all. The seem to instigate people to put down or make fun of the questions Is Rome worth seeing?....... - preposterous.

I do not follow the Fodors deletion policy either. Right now there is a blantant advertisement for a book on Prague that some fellow sells. The advertisement has been posted in response to a legitimate question about train travel between Prague and Frankfurt am Main. The advertisement is still there in direct violation of Fodors' stated policy. <BR>On the other hand, I wrote a short response to a euro question. To give my comments the needed authority and to convey the facts accurately, I included a short quote from the home page of the European Economic Union.<BR>I cited my reference, enclosed it in quotation marks, and gave credit to the author. As far as I know this kind of citation is legal because I used it for years when I footnoted scholarly publications. For some reason the Fodors hatchet person chopped it down.<BR>I think they don't know what they are doing and, to compound the problem, the actions that some Fodors junior editor takes are inconsistent, capricious, and sometimes damaging to avowed mission of Travel Talk.<BR>Our only choices are to abandon our practice of reading Travel Talk, or to put up with it. Like everybody these days, the staff is probably told to do more with less. The result is a loss of quality in what is done because in order to meet the demands, everything is done hurriedly. I think the procedure must be this: If in doubt, chop it.<BR>But I agree with you, it seems to be a strangely anomalous situation when inflammatory remarks, capricious silliness, advertising, and frivilous remarks remain while posts that contain good information are cut.

Yes Bob. I was very enthusiastic when I found this board. I have posted honest replies from my own experiences in different matters. I even got a thankyou from Anne, who had asked advice on Venice, and that I had replied to.<BR>I thought I'd check that particular thread to remember what was posted, and it all amounted to her question and one lonely post from surlock. The rest had been deleted. It found it very discouraging and sad. <BR>I believe that valuable experiences from selfless persons have been "whimsically" removed, ergo - hurt feelings.

Bob, I think the Fodors people pretty much always delete threads that are posting info from another source as copyright law is rather complex, especially online stuff, and they do not want to spend the time to figure out if what you did would violate copyright law or not. Perhaps it wouldn't, but it is open to interpretation in the area of how much you quoted from another source -- a short extract of a few words or sentence, if attributed and clearly not used in any way for profit, would be ok I guess but once you start extracting large sections, it gets more subjective. Footnotes in academic articles aren't really the same as posting things on internet public bulletin boards, I don't think. Now, actually I think factual info by the European Union would probably be fine and not a problem, but they do not have lawyers sitting around deciding what to delete and what not to, and I think it's probably expecting too much for them to make critical decisions about what would fall under acceptable use stds and what wouldn't and for the person in charge of grooming this web site to study copyright law. Anyway, that's the copyright issue, I haven't paid much attention to other deletion issues lately as I've been traveling and not on here so much. I realize if you just quoted a sentence of few facts from public info, I agree with you, it shouldn't be a problem, but I'm speculating they have a blanket rule on quotations from other sources. I didn't see your post but suspect your extract was more than a couple words? Now, whether you put quotes around it and cite the author isn't really the issue, as you aren't aloud to publish some other's work without their permission whether you cite them or not, although it's true they consider that fact in court cases from what I've read. Also, academic papers are pretty clearly for academic interest and audience (which, as you know, is hardly anyone ha ha ha), whether this web site is viewed by thousands? (what do you guess on that)