Mystery of the Disappearing Forum Content?

[Verne Bunsen]

The first time I noticed forum content seemingly sucked into a black hole was the thread discussing the untimely and tragic loss of Chris Cornell. After going for a while the whole thread vanished completely. Even my own posts in that thread do not show up in my post history. That seems pretty odd.

Flash forward and I noticed today that all evidence of member LegalizeRanch (an interesting cat to say the least), who was pretty active over the last few days of days, has vanished. Save for a couple of posts by other members containing quotes of his posts. His posts are all gone and he doesn't show up in the Member list.

Is this just the normal behaviour of the forum software when a thread-originating post is deleted or when an account is deleted?  :icon_scratch:

 

[Logrinn]

I'm sure some forum admin can confirm, but I'm pretty sure that if a user account is deleted the posts connected to that account will disappear.

 

[stratamania]

If a thread is deleted, everything in that thread will be gone.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Yeah, I figured that was the case. Just seemed... drastic? Makes sense though. Thanks for the input.

 

[Blackouts]

The thread about Gregg Allman dying disappeared as well...

 

[Verne Bunsen]

That's interesting. I reckon folks have their reasons for erasing a discussion or eliminating an account and all of its posts/contributions. I jumped through the hoops to de-activate my Facebook account when I decided to quit participating in that, so I can understand the desire to control the footprint of your internet presence.

 

[AirCap]

I thought maybe the Forum was dead, and I killed it. Guess not.

 

[Cagey]

When a member is deleted, any posts or threads started by that member (optionally) go down the bit bucket with them, the name is blacklisted and any IP addresses they used are blocked so they can't come back as "new" members.

Generally speaking, you don't notice it because bad actors are nipped in the bud so early in their career there are rarely more than one or two posts that end up missing, and almost never a thread.  We normally get attacked about 3 to 5 times a week, with flurries from time to time where you'll see that many in a day. It's just porn, spam and foreign language ads, usually russian, nothing anyone would want to see.

I don't remember his name, but the member who started the Chris Cornell thread mentioned above was a pretty prolific poster for a short time, with posts in dozens of threads and several he had started on his own. For reasons that were never clear, he started slowly deleting his contributions until they were all gone. Never did know why - I even tried to stop it, as some of the content was stuff we probably would have preferred keeping around.

The most recent one I believe was an AI bot that started essentially benign but finally turned malicious, so there were a number of posts in place before it was terminated. May have been a strategic change to designed to gain credibility before unleashing/unveiling its true aims.

 

[rgand]

Spammers are getting more creative for sure. The ones you have to watch are the trolls that start out contributing then turn on you.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

Thanks for the background there Cagey. As you say, the real downside is the loss of productive contributions!

The spam stuff generally seems to make itself pretty evident, but if the Ranch guy was a bot then I admit I was fooled! We need a Voight-Kampff machine...

 

[Cagey]

You can usually tell if somebody's grammar is off because English isn't their native language, but automated 'bots that try to sound spontaneous and in context will often have idiosyncrasies that don't sound right in conversation. For example, that one always wanted to directly address its instigator, which is unusual to begin with, but then it replaced names with slang endearments that didn't ring true, were overly intimate/inappropriate, or you wouldn't hear in real life. Even then, you might not notice until you get several examples and see a pattern emerging.

 

[rgand]

It good thing my grammer fine. Wouldn't want be mistook for bot. :icon_biggrin:

 

[Cagey]

Hehe! It takes more than confusing plurals, possessives and tenses to sound like a bot.

 

[rgand]

Yeah, I know. Almost makes one feel inadequate to not sound... off. :icon_biggrin:

 

[Cagey]

I don't really know any other languages other than my native English and some peripheral French and Spanish, so I can't really say, but my understanding is English is a tough language to learn, and even if you do it's obvious if you're not native.

 

[rgand]

LOL, like you, i don't know any other languages well. My Spanish is limited to a few words and phrases you really don't want to use in mixed company. French is perhaps a little better than that but still not fully functional. A friend of mine from school also knew German, French, Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin Chinese. The ASA grabbed him up when he enlisted.

 

[mayfly]

The most recent one I believe was an AI bot that started essentially benign but finally turned malicious, so there were a number of posts in place before it was terminated. May have been a strategic change to designed to gain credibility before unleashing/unveiling its true aims.

And here I thought it was a troll from the Gear Page 

 

[PJ Potamus]

Anyone posting as the Ranch Guy from 'The Eric Andre Show' should be banned regardless. If you're going to pretend to be someone from an adult swim show make it Steve Brule or someone actually funny imho

 

[bagman67]

that's DOCTOR Steve Brule, thankyouverymuch.