In Reply to: I think I understand now posted by A.C. on August 04, 2006 at 08:33:04:
Thank you. About your question, when we feel a post has crossed the line & has to be deleted, we have the option of doing a 'discreet delete' or a 'complete delete'. A discreet delete leaves the title & poster's name intact but when you open it the post you see a message that reads, Sorry for the inconvenience. This post has been moved or deleted. With a complete delete, all traces of the post are gone.
Re: the posts in question, I chose to delete them completely since ToC often embedded his offensive messages right in the titles themselves. If I'd gone in & deleted the message readers would still have been left with the title. In fact, sometimes all ToC posted was a title with no message.
If an offensive post generates intelligent rebuttals, I may do a discreet delete on the offensive post & leave the following discussion. But since that leaves readers not knowing what the original offensive wording was, that's usually not the best solution. But when posts are nonsensical or simply initiate angry responses, I opt to delete them completely. I don't know if this is more information than you were asking for, but that's generally the rule of thumb.