Warning: your precious replies might be eaten

I often post a second post and then merge it into the previous post. I do that so no one can say I am splitting replies just to increase the number of posts I have made. Anyone reading my posts from email notifications will see all I said and anyone reading the thread will see all.

Well, I don't actually think that having a Delete button is a bad thing :)

What I do dislike is being able to delete a post (or the entire thread) after some one else has replied to it. Even if it's just a single post, it can make the thread hard to read.

In fact you could argue that even editing a post after someone else has posted shouldn't be allowed - if you need to make a correction you should post again. However, that's a bit Draconian even for me;)

EDIT: 

I do think it would be a good idea for posts that have been edited to be marked as such and time-stamped.

 @Vulpes, The issue is not new... As Mahesh said, hard delete not happening. So they can revert back the threads.

 Or the other way, just remove the "Delete" button :).

 

I think we just make threads Active = False but do not physically delete them. Sometimes editors and moderators delete them as well. 

We can find them if we need to. 

Of course if the thread is intentionally deleted then that is different from a post disappearing.

Also note that we expect entirely new software soon. These comments I hope can influence the new design but I assume the existing software's design will not be modified.

I agree that it is a mistake to allow evidence to be destroyed. Also useful posts should persist (remain available for others).

There have been several cases of threads mysteriously disappearing lately, but the worst one was today when I noticed that about 50 threads had disappeared!

You may remember last month that a guy posted about 50 multiple choice questions and I think that between us Javeed, Sam and myself answered them all for a bit of 'shooting practice'. Anyway, when I was cleaning out old email notifications earlier today, I happened to click on one and find it had disappeared and so too had the rest of them!

Although he denied it as the time, I suspect they were homework questions and he's deleted them himself so no-one can trace where the answers came from. I know of at least one other case where that has happened.

Although these threads have little value, it's another reason why I'm strongly against allowing the OP to delete a thread when a reply has been made to it. If (s)he's cheating, it should remain there for anyone to find. 

It happened to me again that when I clicked submit there was an error and then my post was gone. Fortunately I saved the text before submitting so I was able to try again and then it was successful.

The important news is that it happend a few minutes past midnight in the US east coast (a few minutes past 9:30 AM in India), just as before. So there seems to be something happening at about midnight in the US east coast.

In case it matters, the post that was lost was relatively small. It was bigger than most of Mahesh's posts but not by much.

Also keep in mind, I do not post long replies :) My replies are pretty short. 

I will see if we can have "Auto Save" in next version, something like GMail as Save Draft option. 

I have not seen too many problems or lost too many posts. I have noticed that GetArticles message couple of times. I think sometimes app state is reseting (too much load), and response is taking longer. That said, now we are in the process of rebuilding everything from scratch, lot of things are changing and new code will be much better and we will do more regression and load testing. I would ask other guys to involved in testing when we are ready.

Yes, I'd agree with Sam that this site doesn't lose much - I think I've lost more from my own stupidity :)

Another thing that's worth warning others about is not to press the 'Post' button more than once even if it appears your post hasn't been accepted. I've invariably found that it has been accepted on this site even if I've had to wait 15 minutes to find out for sure!

By sticking rigidly to this rule, I don't think I've double-posted since I joined the site though at least you can delete duplicate posts here without waiting for the admin to do it for you.

However, one thing I don't like about this site is being able to delete a post (or even, in the case of the OP, the whole thread) after some-one else has posted. 

If it's just a single post, then it can make the thread difficult to follow for anyone reading it later. If it's the whole thread, then a carefully crafted reply which might have been useful to others will be lost for ever :(

I have also been in the habit of writing posts in other software and at least copying a post to the clipboard before submitting. When I was active in the MSDN forums, I was in the habit of pressing Ctrl-Ins before submitting, because the MSDN forums were so bad at having problems that caused posts to be lost instead of submitted.

These forums deserve credit for not having this problem very much. It is rare for posts to get lost in these forums, rare enough that I am not in the habit of saving posts before posting. So hopefully this thread will help others to know that it is best to protect your posts (the contents) until you get assurance that it has been posted. This is definitely worthwhile for comments for articles too.

It happened just once, and I have successfully accomplished a few since then.