In an attempt to boost activity I’ve tried to answer a few questions in this, and similar communities. Looking for an old comment, I found out that a bunch of posts I’d answered are now *Permanently Deleted*, and what’s that about? If they’re LLM slop there’s enough of it I’d rather just block the community so as to not waste any time.
That just means OP deleted their post. This can happen for many reasons, but the most common is they get embarrassed at the replies, decide they don’t want it on their post history, or they think the downvotes mean something, like on Reddit
Or get sick of the avalanche of replies in their inbox, since you can’t turn off notifications for responses to a post or comment unlike on reddit. The only way to make it stop is to delete whatever it was.
Also I’m pretty sure by default if a user deletes their Lemmy account most clients also automatically delete all of their posts and comments. If a user gets fed up with us or decides the Fediverse is not for them, when they take their ball and go home that’s really what happens.
It can also mean that a mod removed the post. There was a dust-up in one of the self hosting communities a while back, when people were complaining about users deleting their “I’m having a weird issue with this setup, any tips” types of posts after getting answers. People were even talking about rules to ban repeat offenders.
Turns out, a mod was deleting the posts and citing a “must be about self hosting” rule to say that they should be posted in a tech support community instead. But since the mod wasn’t active 24/7, the posts were often deleted after they had already been answered.
The reason I remember it is because the whole thing ended with that mod throwing a tantrum, promoting some random users to mods with an “if it’s so easy to moderate, you fuckin do it then” message, and deleting their account.
It’s annoying, I see it a lot too. I think it’s mostly people second-guessing or regretting their own comments or posts. I’ve had great conversations with people, only to go back and find the whole thread was deleted. That has happened way more than I would have expected.
I don’t think it has anything to do with LLMs or slop (and I hate the slop), just people afraid of admitting they’re wrong or leaving an unpopular opinion out in the world after it’s been sufficiently argued away.
Some communities simply purge old posts.
Then they fucking stupid and we will never grow Lemmy as a legit site.
It depends on a particular community.
Communities like nostupidquestions are not expected to have posts with important news or problems one might google a year later.
Tech-focused communities, on the contrary, are expected to keep posts forever, so that important information will be accessible. However, some people delete their posts after their problem is solved. This is highely discouraged.
And Lemmy ain’t just one site. Yeah.