Delete threads
- Thread starter Eliatack
- Start date
There are a few reasons why this isn't necessarily a good idea.
First, you could wind up with a situation where disgruntled members could go back and just start deleting all their posts on the site. Especially if those members had some valuable contributions to the site, that could be very bad for the site, because it's possible that those threads/posts were generating some new members through search results on search engines.
Second, and pretty much for the same reason, search engines pick up the threads on sites like this within a day, or so, of them being posted. That means if someone is searching Google for something that's in that post, it's a possibility they'll find this site. If the pages are posted, then soon after deleted, and especially if this continues to happen time and time again, it could hurt the site's ranking in search engines like Google, where we rely on a lot of our traffic to come from. To piggyback off of this, even changing the thread topic (which also changes the link to the thread), to something like "closed", "finished", "please delete, etc, can do more damage than good to the site from a search engine perspective. Imagine if you visit sportscardarena.com/2025-topps-series-1-baseball.1324 and all is good, then the next day you're redirected to sportscardarena.com/please-delete.1324 and all the content on that page is gone. Yeah, not good...and search engines feel the same way.
All that said, it's much preferrable if folks would just report the posts when you're finished with them and a moderator will close the thread for you. Then you won't get any more replies or notifications, but SCA gets to keep the content and, possibly, gain a visitor from it some day.
First, you could wind up with a situation where disgruntled members could go back and just start deleting all their posts on the site. Especially if those members had some valuable contributions to the site, that could be very bad for the site, because it's possible that those threads/posts were generating some new members through search results on search engines.
Second, and pretty much for the same reason, search engines pick up the threads on sites like this within a day, or so, of them being posted. That means if someone is searching Google for something that's in that post, it's a possibility they'll find this site. If the pages are posted, then soon after deleted, and especially if this continues to happen time and time again, it could hurt the site's ranking in search engines like Google, where we rely on a lot of our traffic to come from. To piggyback off of this, even changing the thread topic (which also changes the link to the thread), to something like "closed", "finished", "please delete, etc, can do more damage than good to the site from a search engine perspective. Imagine if you visit sportscardarena.com/2025-topps-series-1-baseball.1324 and all is good, then the next day you're redirected to sportscardarena.com/please-delete.1324 and all the content on that page is gone. Yeah, not good...and search engines feel the same way.
All that said, it's much preferrable if folks would just report the posts when you're finished with them and a moderator will close the thread for you. Then you won't get any more replies or notifications, but SCA gets to keep the content and, possibly, gain a visitor from it some day.
That makes a lot of sense.
