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In response to a question about how to deal with chess addiction (Rid of Addiction), two sensible and quite original replies by newcomer Abhinav Atul were successively deleted by moderators. The second time, the first half of the answer was randomly posted as a comment, losing the second half of the answer. Apart from the fact that the deletion of the answer was completely inappropriate, the casual truncating of half the answer was thoughtless and insulting.

I would like the longer answer by Abhinav Atul to be restored please and an apology issued for the posting of a truncated comment. The comment could easily have been rendered articulate by editing out the first part of the answer. This mentioned politely the deletion of the first comment, but which was not necessary to comprehend the sense of Abhinav Atul's idea.

The second question is why be so heavy-handed as to delete these replies rather than simply hiding or voting for their dismissal? One reason why these exist is to minimize the impact of moderatorial error, as unfortunately happened here.

Thank you for your time.

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This is not so much a "letter of the law" thing as a "spirit of the law" thing from the SE point of view.

The answers were basically suggesting intentional sandbagging (artificial rating loss) on chess sites and/or real life. This is behaviour that is explicitly against the Terms and Conditions of said chess sites and organisations.

While the answers do not violate the Chess Stack Exchange rules, they were essentially promoting illegal behaviour on other sites. I think deletion is perfectly justified here.

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  • But what you say is not what the moderators said. One of them said vaguely it’s not useful. The other just moved the reply to a comment randomly truncating it. Even if the suggested behaviour is not constructive, there are other mechanisms, including downvoting. Your reply here could have been a useful criticism of the deleted reply, instead of receiving a much more limited audience here
    – Laska
    Commented Feb 13, 2020 at 5:43
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    Useful comment or not, accurate reason or not, I prefer to see the answer deleted than to see it left up even with a (dis)qualifying comment.
    – Remellion
    Commented Feb 13, 2020 at 5:52
  • I can understand your position, Remellion. But random deletion with insufficient explanation creates additional confusion and possible rancour on top of what is already an issue. Why would moderators behave like this?
    – Laska
    Commented Feb 13, 2020 at 7:09
  • Violating T&C is not ordinarily illegal.
    – D M
    Commented Feb 20, 2020 at 23:17

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