Why did my post on San Francisco disappear?
 

For some reason, the message I posted on San Francisco earlier this week disappeared! There was some excellent advice, as well as links to photos of San Francisco, and offers of more advice. I was reading them last night and then went back this morning, planning to save the information to my own computer and they were gone! Why would this happen? There was nothing obsence or arguementative. I feel that I've lost a good deal of great advice and information.

Kathy, sadly there is poster here who loves to attack all threads about San Francisco. Although the threads start out helpful, soon he appears and starts raving in his lunatic way that all those people posting are paid by the San Francisco visitor's bureau and in fact are all really just one person pretending to be various posters. There is no real explanation for this behaviour. Several of us have tried to stop it. I contacted Fodor's editors who emailed me back saying they have tried everything including blocking him, but he just uses a new computer each time. Even the editors called him "deranged" and "pathological". It has been suggested to the editors that when he appears they should just remove his posts and let the thread remain. They have done that with a couple of the threads in the past couple days including one about best hotel in Union Square, where they removed about 10 or his rambling insulting posts.

Meanwhile most of us are trying to do what the editors suggested, which is to ignore him.

You may want to repost. Hopefull yours may become one of the threads they will just delete his responses from and you can still gain some good information.

So, how does one email the editors and ask for an expurgated version? There were a couple of great links to photos which I no longer have(and the photos were worth 1000 words, as they say). There was also a kind soul who sent an email address for more info...

If I were that "kind soul" -- email away :) [email protected] I posted in reference to smaller hotels around Union Square area.

Hi Kathy, I'm trying to remember your post and some of the info that was given.
Here is the website for the City Guides Walking Tours: http://www.sfcityguides.org
The Haas Victorian Home Tour: http://www.sfheritage.org/house.html
The transportation system: http://www.sfmuni.com/home/home50.htm
The larger theaters: http://www.bestofbroadway-sf.com/index.html
The Palace Hotel (neat place for Brunch or tea): http://www.sfpalace.com/main/dining.htm
The Mark Hopkins (go for a drink at the top of the Mark): http://www.san-francisco.intercontin...ha/dining.html

Copy what you need from this thread tiday - the deranged poster usually appears at night (7-ish) and does enough damage that the posts have to be removed by morning. Let us know what else you need and we'll try to get it to you.

My original post was "Can anyone get me excited about a trip to San Francisco?" We are going to a wedding in Palo Alto this summer and are planning to spend 4 days in San Francisco, go to the wedding in Palo Alto, and then drive down the coast. I am NOT a San Francisco basher, but due to some unflatering things I read about San Francisco (aggresive street people & other unflattering comments about Union Square; honky=tonk Fisherman's Wharf) I was wondering whether we should just skip San Francisco. I received some very nice responses (although a couple were negative) and some links to pictures of San Francisco which were absolutely beautiful.

Thanks for advice on copying the thread now-- before I lose more information! I couple of things I saw photos of which looked interesting to me was the Japanese Tea Garden in Golden Gate Park and the Palace of Fine Arts? Does anyone have further information? Thanks to all of you.

Is the fine arts museum you are thinking of the Legion of Honor? Check out http://www.thinker.org/legion/index.asp to see if it looks 'right'.

There is information about the tea garden here: (among other places I am sure) http://www.sfgate.com/traveler/guide...s/ggpark.shtml

The European paintings collection at the LoH is fantastic, and there is a nice cafe in the museum to have lunch at.

Kathy:

Here's the link (that I'd posted before,) to my San Francisco album: http://community.webshots.com/user/bookhall

It's quite varied. And as I indicated before, we stayed in Union Square, had loads of fun, and would do it again in a minute!

By all means, see SF. We had never been there until last year...for an Elderhostel program which was all about the city and then a Christmas family gathering. Yes, there are aggressive panhandlers and other less pleasant things like crowds. But what charming and cultural places both in the city and out in the area (like Big Sur, redwoods, Napa Valley, etc). What you see an do depends of course on tastes.

Bill in Missouri [email protected]

KathyM, you may write the editors of this site at this E-Mail address:
[email protected]

In addition to asking them for a transcript of your original post, I hope you will join me in complaining to them about their arbitrary and inconsistent deletion policies. Deletion decisions seem to vary widely depending on which editor is monitoring the site when, but at least some editors are repeatedly and indiscriminately removing entire threads on which posts of which they disapprove appear.

In doing so, they very unfairly remove information that is valuable to people like you, who are totally innocent of and uninvolved in the specific posts in the thread they should be targeting.

I sometimes feel that they are doing this in a heavy-handed attempt to keep those of us who are troubled by some problem behavior we see occurring on this site from commenting on it--even when we don't point a finger at the screen name or names we feel are guilty of it.

It is hard for me to believe that Fodor's would say to us: if you see another poster engaging in deceptive or unethical practices and an unknowing person being victimized by them, keep quiet about it. Look away, don't warn them, don't discuss the type of behavior you see occurring even in general terms, without accusing any specific screen name. Keep us free of any controversy--or we'll make the innocent suffer by deleting the advice and information they've accumulated on the same thread, and people will blame you for causing it to happen.

But by deleting entire threads, rather than targeting only those posts which can be seen by any reasonable standard as breaking Fodor's rules, that is exactly what some editors are saying to us. It is a practice that is not only unfair on its face, but gives any irresponsible person veto power over what threads survive in this forum. Further, rather than being effective in combatting the deceptive and unethical practices of one notorious unnamed poster on this site, its ultimate effect is to aid and enable them.

Kathy, don't miss San Francisco. It's a fact that S.F. has more than its share of street people. A major reason for this is just that it's an exciting and beautiful place to be, even if you don't have any money to spend. Most of them won't bother you in any way, or even panhandle. Very few of those who do panhandle will do so aggressively. I can't guarantee that you won't encounter an agressive panhandler or have some other unpleasant encounter with a steet person, but on the off chance that you do, I will tell you with virtual certainty that it will seem very insignifigant when you leave compared to the good memories you'll have of experiencing S.F.

Of course street people are sometimes seen and sometimes panhandle in Union Square. It is the heart of the city. They are enormously outnumbered by shoppers, theatergoers, tourists and people from all over the San Francisco Bay Area. It is a busy, exciting area dominated by some of the nation's most upscale stores, hotels and restaurants. In praising it to you, I'm not urging it on you as a place to stay as opposed to other fine and interesting areas of San Francisco--it just happens that is the area which has received some particularly grossly distorted and misleading comment on this forum.

Thank you all. You have me convinced! We WILL go to San Francisco! I'm sure I'll be back with many other questions before then, but I'll give a report back after the trip. johncharles, I agree with you completely. I have no idea what went onto the thread since the last time I looked at it, but there was a lot of great information and experience there, which would help both me & others. If there was something objectionable, why not just delete the objectionable posts? It's like cutting off the hand if there's a hangnail! What a waste!

We had the best time in San Francisco in September. I loved the setting, the sights and especially the cable cars. Buy a muni pass and ride them as much as possible. Get an eagle-eyed view from Coit Tower and walk down the delightful Filbert Steps passing by the apt. block used in a Bogart/Bacall movie, walk across the grand Golden Gate Bridge, visit the fortune cookie factory (fun to watch them being made and about $4 a bag to buy, I think) and the fascinating & free cable car museum, etc., etc. There is so much to do and we couldn't cram it all into four days. We liked the art everywhere and the interesting hotels. Try to fit in the Legion of Honor on a Tuesday when admission is free. It's a great city!

Taking this to the top, mainly to ask if there are others who have had Kathy's (the original poster's) experience who want to speak up here.

If so, their stories will be included in my complaint to Fodor's editors about what happened to her, and the similar experiences I've seen happen to others here recently.

I'm referring to people who've seen travel info valuable to them disappear in Fodors' indiscriminate deletion of entire threads, rather than specific offending posts, when there has been any discussion of the activities of the notorious Northern California multiple- screen-names-poster on the thread (let alone his actual appearance and identification.)

Unless you're one of those who find the activities of this person merely irritating rather than potentially harmful to people like Kathy (who, it sounds like from her post mid=thread, almost cancelled her plans to visit S.F. because of him), please read my post earlier in the thread about how I think Kathy and others are being "held hostage" by Fodors to surpress criticism of their handling of this situation.

Since we haven't heard from our perpetrator in a few days, I'm hoping that either he's gotten the message or that Fodors has found a way to block him. It's been blissfully quiet!

Actually we have heard from him. The last two days he's been using the three letter alias (starts w/ A). He actually convinced a poor traveler from the UK that he should visit the Rosecrucian Museum in SJ instead of spending the time in SF. I didn't even try to get into that one because I knew what would happen . . . .

janis, his last post, on the thread you refer to, was on the 6th. He's not appeared on a number of threads where we usually might have expected him, including one whose title even asked for his SJ expertise. I do have a small but growing hope that Fodors has at last taken some effective action.

Kathy, thank you for your kind words on another thread. They were much appreciated. Helping people like you have as rich an experience as possible, as they visit for the first time somewhere I know and love, is the true joy of this site to me.

I realize that no one has successfully answered your question above about the Palace of Fine Arts. This is not, as Margie speculated, the same place as the Palace of the Legion of Honor, an art museum which is a very beautiful location itself. The Palace of Fine Arts is not an art museum, but got its name as one of the principal exhibit halls of the 1915 World's Fair, from which it is the only survivng structure.

Now it houses the Exploratorium, an interactive science museum which is a major local attraction and one I highly recommend. But beyond that fact, the Palace, set in a gorgeous park, and on the shores of a lovely lagoon, is one of San Francisco's most beautiful and serene spots, and one for which I have a particular soft place in my heart, since I lived a few blocks from it for ten years and walked there often when in need of some beauty and peace.

It is located in the Marina district, at Baker and Beach Streets, just to the right as Highway 101 leaves Lombard Street, and its approach to the Golden Gate Bridge begins. To reach it easily by bus, take the 30 bus which goes through Chinatown (it's called the Orient Express by locals)and North Beach, heading north and west, to the end of the line--the Palace is a couple of blocks away.

If you type Palace of Fine Arts San Francisco in a search engine, you'll come upon a number of sites with information about the Palace and the Exploratorium, several with pictures--it is one of the most photographed buildings in The City.

Chestnut Street, through which the 30 bus runs for its last few blocks, is full of interesting shops and restaurants, and the Golden Gate National Recreation Area walking trail along the Bay also passes right by the Palace.

JohnCharles, I did not tell Kathy that the Legion of Honor and the Palace of fine arts were the same thing. On one of her "lost" posts I had referenced the LoH - then she asked for help to get the suggestions back after her post was deleted because of yet another on-line fight. I simply thought that when she referenceed needing the Palace info that she was referring to my previous suggestion of the Legion of Honor.

Sorry, Margie, clearly I was missing a post or two which would have helped me understand your question to Kathy better. Without them, if you just look at her question then yours as they sit now, I think you can understand why I interpreted you the way I did. Bottom line is that they are both wonderful places to recommend to her, and so far as I could see, no one had given her the additional info she was asking for on the Palace of Fine Arts yet.