All too often I am late to a post, only to see endless streams of [deleted] comments. It seems like this phenomenon is more pronounced in this sub than others.
So first, am I wrong? Do I just really crave the information more in this sub, so memories if the [deleted] stuff stands out in my mind? Or is it actually more prevalent here than elsewhere?
If it is prevalent here, well, why could that be? Any insight would be much appreciated.
And finally, I'm sorry if this post is out of line. I tried to read the sidebar, but it was hard to navigate on mobile. Mods, of you have to delete this, I would still like some of your thoughts (so if that is the case, message me?).
Cheers
Trust me on this: I don't mod here, but I mod over in ye olde /r/askscience which has a similar comment philosophy. You are not missing anything in these deleted trees. The contain unsourced answers, bad attempts at puns, etc.
If you're here because you're interested in history, then the deleted trees are a good thing! What is left is quality, informative, and well written answers that are correct.
I wish we could run AskScience as tight as they do over here, but with 3+ million users it is nearly impossible.
You certainly aren't mistaken! The moderation team is very active and we are aggressive in our enforcement of the rules. Posts that break the rules of the sub are removed, and in cases of egregious or repeat violations, the poster is warned for their behavior, or even banned.
Some time ago, I did an impromptu study of removed comments in a thread that had gotten popular. I didn't save a link to the thread, but because I'm a very messy person, I still have the paper I did the tallies on, so I can give you a run down of what the deleted comments in a typical thread are!
Out of the 60 TOP LEVEL comments (this excludes follow up comments)
3 User Comments were visible
2 Mod Comments were visible
3 comments had been removed for being questionable or simply wrong.
1 comment was removed pending a request for a source
7 comments were removed for being one one or two sentence answers.
4 comments were removed for being personal anecdotes
2 comments were removed for being jokes
23 comments were posts that were only links, with no context. Mostly Wikipedia I would imagine, but I didn't separate what the links were in my notes.
13 comments were removed because they were comments asking why all the comments had been removed!
2 comments were removed because they simply made no sense whatsoever.
So as you can see, generally speaking you aren't missing anything. Hope that clarifies things for you a bit.
This subreddit has quite clear rules and they are enforced well. This results in a very quality sub, and in turn a reasonably popular one. It also results in some posts being graveyards of deleted comments. This is a testimony to the greatness of our all powerful overlord moderators. Long may they reign.