Dear Sam, or Roger or whoever is in charge,

I take it that the "Your Top 3 Backpacks" thread has been quietly removed? I do understand why that would happen, but it would have been nice to have been informed. I took a lot of time to write my one post there and tried very hard to be fair and non-inflammatory. I don't just usually write things without thinking carefully about them first and only write them when I feel there is something important to say (or to try to engage people in positive interaction, like laughter). Kind of defeats the purpose of writing something if it is just going to disappear without notice.

Well, good riddance to the whole sorry thread, though. It was really getting on my nerves.

Keep up the good work!
Miguel

Dear Moderators:

I appreciated the thread until it seemed I ignited a firestorm. Is it possible to bring the thread back with just the contentious postings removed? With the back and forth and comments from onlookers remove, maybe the thread could get back on point. I will attempt to avoid lighting another match.

If that is not possible, I agree that it better that the thread was killed rather than letting it to continue to run and degenerate further. I appreciated Miguel's attempt to bring it back to the question at hand rather than were it had degenerated to.

Thanks for your service,
Mark

Edited by verber on 06/29/2009 19:46:12 MDT.

Hmmm. Apparently things degenerated in that thread since the last time I checked.

Surely it is better to simply caution users and remove inflammatory posts than to delete the whole thread?

Given that threads are *very* rarely deleted on BPL I have to wonder why this thread was given special treatment. Can anyone fill me in on what went down? Terribly curious...

Mark - I do take some responsibility with that thread as well. I was the first one in his sights and I apologize to all (esp. BPL) for not ignoring his reponses to me.

I'm also sorry that the part of the thread that was not concerned with the controversy was deleted. I was about to contribute my $.02 about Six Moon Designs packs when the controversy erupted. At that point I decided to stay away. But thank you very much for deleting the controversy, even if some useful posts went with it!

Ashley, you really don't want to know. I read only a small portion, but it was very unpleasant.

Edited by hikinggranny on 06/29/2009 19:45:10 MDT.

Hi all

I am not sure who deleted this thread, but it was not me.

Yes, it was getting a little 'warm', but the language was staying polite and no-one was getting overly personal. (And no-one was selling Chinese shoes.)

My own take on the matter was that readers might be able to form their own judgements about the issues by reading the posts, even if their judgements were not exactly what some of the more enthusiastic posters might have wanted.

Cheers

I might have made the last post in that thread, and I was thinking about trying to get things back on topic like Miguel did, but I opted to voice my opinion about the other issue instead. I will say that in my opinion I said what I felt in a somewhat tactful manner. I thought the thread had been killed long ago and that it would not be getting on track anytime soon. The thread topic was really nice and I think it would be of value to start it up again from the beginning.

As for deleting the other thread, I agree completely with Roger. However, it was terribly off topic, so in that regard it should have at least been moved, but deletion was unnecessary. I believe that everything that happened in that thread is valuable for people to see. This is a small community we are all part of and I believe transparency is important. Everyone made choices and this community discussed them and there is no reason for that to go away. They say you can never erase anything off the internet and that should be true. This all stopped mattering when Dan deleted his posts though so there is no reason for the thread to exist anymore.

Oh, Dan deleted his posts. If so, why was the entire thread deleted? Was it done at his request?

No, Dan had already opted out of the discussion. The last two posts (mine being one) were already redundant when we posted. This was one of those threads that had self-regulated itself and though it got a little emotional, there was no name calling such as in one of the gun threads. I'm actually surprised that this thread was cut, while the gun thread wasn't, since the gun thread certainly was a lot less civil, a LOT longer, and certainly much more volatile.

Andrew, I thought your post was very tactful and said what needed to be said. I think most of the posts were tactful, even Mark Verber's replies.

Edited by butuki on 06/30/2009 02:05:34 MDT.