Over the last several weeks, the moderators have noticed an uptick in users deleting text submission posts they've made to our community. These are usually questions, but what we are about to talk about includes posts meant for discussion, venting, whatever--anything submitted as a text post (like this one).

While we know the rules, FAQ, and policies of our sub are quite long, we strongly encourage every visitor and regular user here to become familiar with what they say. After all, they exist for a reason.

Under consideration today is policy number 11 regarding question and discussion submissions. Specifically, we want to highlight this part:

And finally, please do not delete your questions or discussion threads after having received answers or comments. It is very rude to do this as it exploits the knowledge or opinions of our community for your personal edification while preventing the post from being easily discoverable through search functions.

When you--Native or non-Native--come to this space and submit a text post to ask a question, start a conversation, or whatever it may be about, you are asking our community to volunteer their labor, experiences, knowledge, emotions, intellect, and possibly even their spirit to respond to your post. But should you choose to delete your post, which is entirely your prerogative, you have moved from being a facilitator of discourse to an exploiter. You have taken that labor, those experiences, that knowledge, the emotions, intellect, and even spirit from those who offered it up for yourself and prevent others from sharing in those offerings. Deleting your post makes it nearly impossible to discover through regular search functions, thus obscuring whatever was shared with you.

So while it is your privilege on Reddit to do whatever you wish with your content (i.e., a post you make), know that these communities are empowered to regulate how you interact with us, including when you abuse your privileges. I am kindly requesting users here to not delete your text posts once you've started receiving replies, especially meaningful ones, and I am reminding everyone that doing so constitutes a violation of our rules and there may be penalties. Please note that this policy does not apply to comments, though.

Exceptions

Now, we also want to acknowledge that there are exceptions to this policy. If there is a concern over the sharing of personal identifiable information (PII), you or someone affiliated with your post has been doxxed, or your post has been removed by the moderators, then you are free to delete your post without penalty. These are obviously security or moderation concerns and if there is a threat or potential harm involved (or nobody can see the post anyways because it's been removed), then you are not violating our policy when deleting your post.

If you have submitted a text post to this community and later determine you must delete it, give the moderators a heads up by modmailing us so we know why the post is being deleted. Otherwise, if we discover this later on, we may take action against you despite there being grounds for an exception.

Qe'ci'yew'yew for your time.