You know what I am getting from this? Instead of being thankful and being concise and to the point - we should make our thank you posts full of bullshit and fluffy spam so that they don't get deleted....
in fact, some of the posts deleted are not even simple "thank you" posts - some are longer but simply start off with "thank you"
Collectibles is a bit different than the rest of the forums when it comes to someone saying thanks - now if it was someone who did not participate in the raffle - maybe that would be terms for deletion. But what was done here was stupidity - I see it simply as a means to ensure some lazy mod gets paid. And by lazy - I do not necessarily mean they do nothing but that that what they are doing is being done lazily - without actually understanding what is being done - simple "hey they said thank you - delete that fucking spam!" - is maybe suitable elsewhere on the forums but it is not that cut/dry here in collectibles.
And if they do not understand that - then they should not be moderating this area of the forums. Let them get paid for deleting spam elsewhere.
If you want the Collectibles board to have a special status, petition the administration for said status. Until such status is granted or at least til the administration instructs me to handle these cases differently, I'll treat it as any other board.
special status? no. I just want moderators that are not ignorant. Following cookie cutter ideas/concepts and trying to apply that same concept to everything is just a sign of ignorance. To moderate should require an IQ above that of a corpse.
How, from a non-emotional and non-biased perspective, is someone posting a "thanks" for being able to participate in a raffle different from someone posting a "thanks" for an interesting post, good advice or some other action that the poster feels like it deserves gratitude? Because posts that can be boiled down to "thanks", "wow" and similar short phrases without really losing anything are already being deleted forum-wide.
Also, real classy move calling me stupid just because you disagree with the way I moderate.
I did not call anyone stupid - simply stated that to moderate requires thought and a functioning brain - if you have those, then my statement does not apply to you.
As for your question:
How, from a non-emotional and non-biased perspective, is someone posting a "thanks" for being able to participate in a raffle different from someone posting a "thanks" for an interesting post
Simple - the people that participated often in these raffles have paid to be part of the raffle or are partaking in a raffle where the participants pay nothing and the host is the one incurring the cost of gifting the item - often including free shipping. There is tangible - real world objects at stake with these raffles. Sometimes, the value can be quite high - take for example the last raffle involving the silver Litecoin wallet/block. The crypto value is 12.5 LTC, then add the value of the silver content - this is not a simple post of an "interesting" topic.
People posting "thanks" on an interesting topic, have put nothing into it. They simply read it.
That is why if someone is going to moderate the collectibles area, they need to understand that a blanket policy simply does not work.