Why did the thread get locked or deleted?

Question

Disclaimer: Apple does not necessarily endorse any suggestions, solutions, or third-party software products that may be mentioned in the topic below. Apple encourages you to first seek a solution at Apple Support. The following links are provided as is, with no guarantee of the effectiveness or reliability of the information. Apple does not guarantee that these links will be maintained or functional at any given time. Use the information below at your own discretion.
Occasionally you may see a thread get locked or deleted, or the possibility of a user having been banned. This tip is a viewpoint of an end user of how the Terms of Use apply to deletions, locks, or bans. Moderators may at their discretion choose these actions as the Terms of Use allow them to, even when none of these points below matter.
When you signed up on this board, a Terms of Use page was agreed to in order for you to enter. That Terms of Use page is also on the link "Help & Terms of Use" on the right hand side. Posts themselves may get deleted that weren't the source of the thread being locked or deleted. So if you didn't disobey the Terms of use, someone else might have.
Do not take either as a sign of censorship, a sign of personal chastisement, or anything negative per say. This is after all a community open to the public.
When one of the terms of use is violated, it is either because it does not offer constructive points of view for fixing a technical issue from end user to end user, or it is overly digressive from doing such actions. Terms of use suggest to avoid:
1. Prognosticating.
2. Guessing Apple's policy.
3. Offer advice on something which may be against copyright laws.
4. Offer advice on something which would violate a license agreement.
5. Posting in a thread with "me toos". Try to solve the problem at hand. It makes it very hard for those of us trying to help the original poster when additional people chime in, saying they too have the same problem, or have a problem almost identical. Those trying to help
the original poster, may not know if the solution applies to all the people having the problem, or just some. It ends up requiring people coming to help to directly address a person to avoid confusing who should follow various advice.
A Post New Topic is available at all Forum levels, but at the Category level of Discussions. For more on this discussion, see the tip here:
http://discussions.apple.com/ann.jspa?annID=650
6. Other things which may be illegal in the State of California or in the United States of America
should not be suggested or inferred by what you post.
7. Rants or complaints about people and companies.
They are unhelpful, and really don't solve technical issues.
Approach complaints with tact when posting in a public forum that is moderated such as this one.
It is one thing to say, I hate this feature being missing, is there any way to get this feature added, or are there any ways of getting it from another source?
It is another thing to blame Apple for a feature that is missing, and drop the ball at that waiting for a response. These type of posts are more likely to be frowned upon.
Complaining of a service not rendered is also often frowned upon. There are points of contact later in this tip to address such service issues. This is a forum for addressing technical inquiries about how things work or if things can be made to work on your system.
8. Polls asking for a feature to be added/removed are generally frowned upon, as well as polls about various apparent defects and their propensity. You are only addressing less than 1% of the Apple using population here.
Such polls would not be very scientific even if they are carried out for long periods of time. Long threads may appear to act as polls, and may violate terms of use. If you see such a thread and wonder why it hasn't been locked or deleted, you are welcome to ask that in Discussions Feedback, or click on "Report This Post" at the bottom right corner if available.
As the Terms of Use state, in the end essentially it is up to the moderator to decide if a thread is worthy being deleted or locked. Don't take it personally if it is. Also Level 2 through Level 5 users, while we can ask the moderators look at a thread, we are not Apple Employees. You may also ask a moderator look at a thread or an individual on the Discussion Feedback forum or by clicking Report this post at the bottom right hand corner of a specific post.
If the purpose of your thread is to provide feedback to Apple for a product, see these pages:
http://www.apple.com/contact/
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html
If you have isolated a bug with a procedure worthy of a software developer, sign up for a free developer account on http://developer.apple.com/ and report the bug here:
http://bugreporter.apple.com/
As this is a user to user forum answers may not come right away. Have patience, and usually someone eventually can come up with an answer. Some forums may not fit the subject line of your topic, and you are welcome to ask if you are unsure where to post a topic.
This is the 2nd version of this tip. It was submitted on September 28, 2010 by a brody.
Do you want to provide feedback on this User Contributed Tip or contribute your own? If you have achieved Level 2 status, visit the User Tips Library Contributions forum for more information.

Answer 1

Disclaimer: Apple does not necessarily endorse any suggestions, solutions, or third-party software products that may be mentioned in the topic below. Apple encourages you to first seek a solution at Apple Support. The following links are provided as is, with no guarantee of the effectiveness or reliability of the information. Apple does not guarantee that these links will be maintained or functional at any given time. Use the information below at your own discretion.
Occasionally you may see a thread get locked or deleted, or the possibility of a user having been banned. This tip is a viewpoint of an end user of how the Terms of Use apply to deletions, locks, or bans. Moderators may at their discretion choose these actions as the Terms of Use allow them to, even when none of these points below matter.
When you signed up on this board, a Terms of Use page was agreed to in order for you to enter. That Terms of Use page is also on the link "Help & Terms of Use" on the right hand side. Posts themselves may get deleted that weren't the source of the thread being locked or deleted. So if you didn't disobey the Terms of use, someone else might have.
Do not take either as a sign of censorship, a sign of personal chastisement, or anything negative per say. This is after all a community open to the public.
When one of the terms of use is violated, it is either because it does not offer constructive points of view for fixing a technical issue from end user to end user, or it is overly digressive from doing such actions. Terms of use suggest to avoid:
1. Prognosticating.
2. Guessing Apple's policy.
3. Offer advice on something which may be against copyright laws.
4. Offer advice on something which would violate a license agreement.
5. Posting in a thread with "me toos". Try to solve the problem at hand. It makes it very hard for those of us trying to help the original poster when additional people chime in, saying they too have the same problem, or have a problem almost identical. Those trying to help
the original poster, may not know if the solution applies to all the people having the problem, or just some. It ends up requiring people coming to help to directly address a person to avoid confusing who should follow various advice.
A Post New Topic is available at all Forum levels, but at the Category level of Discussions. For more on this discussion, see the tip here:
http://discussions.apple.com/ann.jspa?annID=650
6. Other things which may be illegal in the State of California or in the United States of America
should not be suggested or inferred by what you post.
7. Rants or complaints about people and companies.
They are unhelpful, and really don't solve technical issues.
Approach complaints with tact when posting in a public forum that is moderated such as this one.
It is one thing to say, I hate this feature being missing, is there any way to get this feature added, or are there any ways of getting it from another source?
It is another thing to blame Apple for a feature that is missing, and drop the ball at that waiting for a response. These type of posts are more likely to be frowned upon.
Complaining of a service not rendered is also often frowned upon. There are points of contact later in this tip to address such service issues. This is a forum for addressing technical inquiries about how things work or if things can be made to work on your system.
8. Polls asking for a feature to be added/removed are generally frowned upon, as well as polls about various apparent defects and their propensity. You are only addressing less than 1% of the Apple using population here.
Such polls would not be very scientific even if they are carried out for long periods of time. Long threads may appear to act as polls, and may violate terms of use. If you see such a thread and wonder why it hasn't been locked or deleted, you are welcome to ask that in Discussions Feedback, or click on "Report This Post" at the bottom right corner if available.
As the Terms of Use state, in the end essentially it is up to the moderator to decide if a thread is worthy being deleted or locked. Don't take it personally if it is. Also Level 2 through Level 5 users, while we can ask the moderators look at a thread, we are not Apple Employees. You may also ask a moderator look at a thread or an individual on the Discussion Feedback forum or by clicking Report this post at the bottom right hand corner of a specific post.
If the purpose of your thread is to provide feedback to Apple for a product, see these pages:
http://www.apple.com/contact/
http://www.apple.com/feedback/
http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html
If you have isolated a bug with a procedure worthy of a software developer, sign up for a free developer account on http://developer.apple.com/ and report the bug here:
http://bugreporter.apple.com/
As this is a user to user forum answers may not come right away. Have patience, and usually someone eventually can come up with an answer. Some forums may not fit the subject line of your topic, and you are welcome to ask if you are unsure where to post a topic.
This is the 2nd version of this tip. It was submitted on September 28, 2010 by a brody.
Do you want to provide feedback on this User Contributed Tip or contribute your own? If you have achieved Level 2 status, visit the User Tips Library Contributions forum for more information.