First post from thread for TOS violation: what would you do?

[JAB Creations]

I'm working on the forum post report tool for the next version of my site which is getting very close to beta and I'm stuck on some conceptual work. I have to decide how to handle reported forum posts that are the first post in a thread. The issue there is by removing it outright then the first reply becomes the original post which would not work logically...sort of like joining a conversation after a question was asked but not hearing anything until the first answer. I could leave the post itself but replace the post's text with some placeholder TOS violation text though that wouldn't work.

As for posts that are not the first post in a thread I'll just have them removed easily enough. Any way I'm interested in hearing how others have or would handle this sort of predicament?

- John

[jimbeetle]

I'd say that if you could edit it to comply with your ToS, then do so.

If you can't, then the thread probably shouldn't have been started in the first place. Nuke it in its entirety.

[JAB Creations]

That's what a friend of mine said and thank you for reaffirming their suggestion. :)

- John

[enigma1]

Or if you want it to be done automatically, erase only the content of the first post leave the rest of the thread intact. Or erase it and lock the thread.

One of the problems is you may have, is to parse the responses for possible quotes in that case and also clean them up. Depends what are the triggers for this mechanism (external links, keywords etc) and if the check is fully automatic in which case you shouldn't have to do anything, or semi with preview/manual approval.

I think it's also important to identify whether the posting is automated or not as you can avoid lots of complications and forum cleanup.

[claus]

If you plainly remove the whole thread you open up a support issue, of sorts: How are the people that have posted in the thread supposed to find out what happened to their posted wisdom?

Personally I would prefer a manual edit. That makes issues clearer for people to understand, and it also adds a "human touch" to the "feel" of your site.

If that is not possible, I would remove the whole thread, but in its place I would put up a generic message about the thread being moved because of TOS violation.

[JAB Creations]

Thank you both for the further input. I've basically formatted everything so that I have all those options. I have the options to delete the entire thread, delete individual posts, edit the post, or lock the entire thread directly from the log. When I choose to outright delete a thread or edit the original post will be subjective to what is posted naturally however it's all programmed in and I have those options. My original post here was more about determining what options I should add for myself then what I should do...and with all those options I can choose to give it that human touch if in example it's not an outright troll thread. :)

- John