I come in reference to this thread. http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2zwca4/diesel_engines_were_invented_earlier_last_longer/
I wish I could have seen what the top level comment said, seeing as it explained more of the chemical side that would have been relevant enough to talk about and possibly someone could have springboarded off it. Deleting anything and everything that staff feels is like "off topic" despite being decently on topic is just wrong.
I understand deleting troll posts and irrelevant responses but when OP says "Thanks for at least explaining the chemical side of things" says to me that they were thankful for the response even if it wasn't exactly what they were looking for, at least someone else can explain something else for them as well.
Tell me I'm wrong but I feel like this thread was basically deleted for no reason by an overzealous moderator.
/u/Vertexoflife If and when you see this, I respectfully ask that you hold your tongue and allow other staff to speak. I have seen your standpoint and I would like to hear from other members of the moderation team.
As a moderator who's not /u/vertexoflife, I'm just going to say that you must be new here, if you don't understand that the deletion of substandard posts is regular and accepted practice.
I point you to a casual search result of our forum, and of the other times this exact question has been asked.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/search?q=deleted+meta&restrict_sr=on
In some of the threads, I believe other moderators actually show what the deleted posts are, and almost universally, people understand why they've been deleted (because they are substandard).
Every sub has the right to make its rules for participation. We have made it our rule to remove substandard posts in order to promote quality. This policy has been very effective, and will not be changed.
So to answer your question, yes you are wrong. /u/vertexoflife is not an overzealous moderator, and is in fact well within the norms of our moderation policies here.
First let me preface this by saying that singling out one moderator and asking them to "hold their tongue" verges on incivility.
Second, you may be used to subreddits that work with a Walker Texas Ranger model where each mod works essentially alone, but we don't. We are constantly evaluating one another's work and conferring with each other on moderation issues, and any debate about moderation you might be hoping we will have out in the open here had already happened internally a long time ago. Suffice to say, our policies are the product of a lot of thought, and everyone on the mood team is on board with this particular set of policies.
To be honest, we're readers as well. All the mods are. We're only here because we love the sub, and because we love to learn. As you're coming from that place as well, you'd understand our frustration and disappointment when we see comments that just aren't up to snuff. We're trying to represent our community and our community wants a pretty high standard. And we try and get people there as well - for the stuff that's almost there but not quite, we tend to ask the poster to make alterations so we can put it back together again. If we're going to nuke a thread because it is off-topic, we know it could be a problematic call - that's why we discuss these things at great length in the modmail.
Just FYI, I think I should probably point out how much the mods literally delight in a good thread - we pass it out between ourselves, we post them up on Twitter, we upvote with all the upvotes the fickle Reddit gods will allow us. We celebrate good content as much as we remove the poorer stuff.