A little lost

Hello, I am a little lost as to why a master pollinator appeared to support me regarding a pollinator who appeared to be “ slamming “ my post. ( His words not mine. )
After which I received a message stating that my post was deleted. If I violated a standard I was not aware of I apologize but am unsure as to how one moment there was support and the next I am sent a message that my post was unacceptable. When I reviewed the post I saw that the master pollinator had deleted his response and in the email sent to me  a link was sent about bossiness.

Again , I understand that I am new, and that leadership has the right to remove the post if it doesn’t meet standards. But I am lost as to what happened here.

I also agree that the pollinator had the right to post his opinion but would have preferred that he had sent me a message rather than question the motivation of my post publicly. My response was an attempt to explain my motivation in posting it.

Lost…

I haven't had a chance to look into anything (as it's bedtime), but maybe this might help a bit. Pollinators are not moderators here on permies. (Here's a handy thread about titles, because I know titles can be confusing. They sure were when I joined: what do these titles mean? - steward, gardener, etc)

Only Gardeners, Stewards, and Mother Trees are moderators. On Desktop view, anyone who is a moderator has a little icon under their name, by their title. I just went and checked, and on mobile view it's a more discrete brown oval that says "staff."

Anyway, Pollinators are just people who--in general--make lots of really good posts. They can give away an apple a day to any post they like. That apple is sort of a "stamp of approval," but really, it just says that someone who can give away apples, liked your post. It's like a fancier thumbs-up, if that makes sense.

Master Pollinators get the added "master" title because  our forum software's algorithm (called "Gir Bot") decided they'd done a lot of good things, like getting thumbs up, getting apples, making new threads, writing book reviews, giving thumbs-up, making new posts, and even posting in Meaningless Drivel on Fridays. The only thing that's different between a Master Pollinator and a Pollinator is that they can give out three apples/day, and that Gir Bot liked them that month. Every month, Gir Bot picks new Master Pollinators (as well as Master Gardeners and Master Stewards)

Master Pollinators aren't moderators, and they don't really have any extra powers other than giving apples and access to a few private forums.

As for that Master Pollinator deleting their post, usually people can't delete their own posts here one permies, since that'll cause big ol' gaps in a thread that get confusing (see Deleting Stuff). So, if they had their post deleted, it's most likely that a moderator deleted it because it violated publishing standards. Or the moderator asked for them to edit it (in which case, it's basically deleted until the person edits it and has that edit approved).

In the end, it seems like two different humans who have shiny titles had different opinions about your post, and a moderator saw things were getting a bit nasty, or off topic, or might end up getting nasty, and just tried to stop the problem. Moderating is hard. Sometimes it's nice and easy--like squishing spam--but a lot of the time it's just trying to do out best to keep permies a nice place for people to talk about permaculture and making the world a better place. And if things start detracting from that (or looks like they might start a flame war or invite trolls or just cause things to get nasty), we might step in an preventively take moderation actions.

Anyway, all of that is without looking at your specific situation and what got deleted. I just know being moderator is hard (from 6 years of moderating here on permies), and people are human.

I hope that helps, at least a little, explain some of the terms and such, as I know there's a lot around here! It took me a while to get a hang of things, and you've only been here a few weeks. We're glad you're here, and glad you're willing to learn.

If it helps, here's a How permies.com works - links to useful threads. That thread exists because I also wasn't sure what all the titles, etc meant.

It's off to bed with me . If you have more questions about how permies works, please feel free to ask!!!

I think another specific permie publishing guideline is summed up as be nice.  Moderators are much happier to read, "this is what I think", than "you're wrong because..." The latter doesn't move the conversation forward and breaks the "be nice" guidelines.

I can read your enthusiasm in the thread you started about "Off Grid".  However, a person can start a thread, and ask questions, but on this site, every reader can interpret the topic and question through their own experiences. Not everyone will write it so clearly that everyone will interpret it exactly the same way.

I contributed to a thread a few months ago. The OP asked something and got some fair answers. Then it triggered a side shoot and it appeared that the whole thread wandered off into the weeds. Then I read the thread and connected the trunk and the side shoot with a third relevant connection and the OP was pretty astounded and said as much.

Starting a new topic is a bit like having a baby. You can choose to have that baby, but you don't get to choose what it's going to be when it grows up! However, by contributing "nice" input to the thread, and "asking questions", you can guide the thread to some degree. However, like so many things in life, you can't "force" it.

Every user, pollinator, gardener, and steward gets to have their own opinion about a post. Sometimes we have a consensus and everyone smiles.

Sometimes a topic might attract positive attention from some staff, and negative attention from other staff.  Staff would rather spend time gardening than moderating, therefore, a thread that requires lots of staff attention tends to draw closer scrutiny than a live and let-live thread.

The following thread addresses a general theme very similar to what happened here.
https://permies.com/t/151528/Perennial-Discussions

Apologies to our fine mods for causing a ruckus. I posted in a fit of pique and shouldn't have.

Just shake it off, Kimberly. I read that thread last night, and I don't think the deletions had anything to do with you personally.  It was just about keeping the site as a whole on topic.

I think that post you thought was critical of you was just heading down a different path than you expected. I was pretty confused by the reaction to it and went back read it twice to see what I was missing. To me it just sounded like "Hmm, that's an interesting statistic. I wonder how they got that number. Here are a bunch of different routes a person could take to come up with different numbers."

Maybe I'm totally wrong, but if I was confused, probably some other people were, too. Rather than having a whole thread devolve into singling someone out and debating over how to interpret their post, some moderator thought it would be better to just delete it. Then no one's pulled into drama instead of talking about fun and interesting permies things.  Think about it. Would the forum be better if it had a thread with people arguing about who was or wasn't insulted, sucking in more people and resulting in hurt feelings all round?

Just forget it happened and keep posting fun and interesting things, like you have been 🤗

Hi,

Please remove my post from the topic,  "What would you do with a million dollars?"

Thanks!
Misty