I deleted it because it lacked any substantive content for discussion.

I am sorry your understanding of the topic is so limited.

I guess your English is also lacking, as that was pity.

Just ponder my question for awhile, as personally I think it is your perception that is "devoid of any substantive content" here.

My question was not only an important question but one that is not so easy to answer. However, if you want to kill your own already dying forums, that is of course your choice.

If it's such an important question then there should be plenty for you to say about it beyond the two lines that was your thread. Feel free to try again with a bit more for people to chew on.

So "importance" is relative to text length? I don't think you really believe that.

Simple was the best approach for that topic. I wanted to see how people responded with the open ended question before framing my own context. As doing such at the start of a thread can push things towards my bias. I actually thought that thread out, as I always do when I host a thread; however, I don't feel like trying again; you killed the mood.

Also you may want to let things grow a bit more before deleting them. Just my suggestion, but perhaps allowing a conversation to develop could be just as beneficial or even more so than throwing a wall of text at people.

Well I think this proves that this place is a waste of my time. Goodbye.

Damn. I'm sorry I missed this. I do not know what the OP wrote in the body of their post. But I'd be happy to talk about whether math is a lie. A very strong case can be made that math is a lie. See in fact. this excellent article on fictionalism in the philosophy of mathematics.

On the other hand a strong case can be made that math is not a lie. It's trying to tell us something about the world, if we can only figure out what that is. That could be argued as well. Certainly math has immense practical relationship to the world. The "unreasonable effectiveness" of math, as the famous essay goes.

I hope you see that there are many good avenues for discussion based on this title. It goes directly to the foundational struggles of the 1920's, with Hilbert looking for a purely symbolic way of settling all questions in math. And Gödel dashing those hopes and showing the very limits of formal reasoning in determining what's true.

Is math a lie? We could talk about that all day.

Here's another angle. Are some areas of math more real than others? We're all pretty sure that 1 + 1 = 2 tells us something about the real world. But how about large cardinals, which are infinite quantities so large they can't even be proved to exist in standard set theory. Set theorists keep making up new higher levels of infinity based on additional axioms. Large cardinals have been an active area of study for decades. Are these higher cardinals as "real" as the first few positive integers? Discuss.

What did the OP say so as to merit such a rapid no-platforming?

I'm for free speech. What did I miss?

It was two lines, one of which was the thread title. Had it had a minimum of content like even your post just then fish, I'd have been fine with it. But a question dangling in the ether does not a thread make. Again, feel free to start a thread on the topic if it interests you. As a general rule, questions have stakes - the difference it makes if one were to answer it one way or another - and stakes can be - ought to be - expanded upon, especially here, on a philosophical discussion board.

From the guidelines:

Starting new discussions:

Don't start a new discussion unless you are:

a) Genuinely interested in the topic you've begun and are willing to engage those who engage you.

b) Able to write a thoughtful OP of reasonable length that illustrates this interest, and to provide arguments for any position you intend to advocate.

c) Capable of writing a decent title that accurately and concisely describes the content of your OP.

d) Starting an original topic, i.e. a similar discussion is not already active.

---------

Then it's up to the moderator to try to determine what a reasonable length is and @StreetlightX has given an explanation for his reasoning. (Some of these slip through the net but it's often because the discussion has progressed too far and deleting it would unfairly punish other posters).

Well I think this proves that this place is a waste of my time. Goodbye. — Jeremiah

Seems like an overreaction to me. Nobody likes their OPs being deleted but this is not a problem that should be difficult to fix, I would have thought. In any case, best of luck.

Perhaps deletion should be a last resort, with the OP first prodded to add more to the first post? Particularly if they are not fully aware of rules about brief OPs.

Maybe the rule is not needed - given how many brief-OP threads go on to become meaningful and not actually deleted?

There's no way to know for certain who has read the guidelines, but they are pinned and don't take long to read, so it's not unreasonable to expect posters have done that. Whether an OP is prodded or not is up to the individual mod.

it's not unreasonable to expect posters have done that. — Baden

well human nature and all that....

Prodding seems like the gentler option, but it can be somewhat of an editorial headache that also tends to drag a thread down: what if the discussion remains superficial? Do you delete it after people have invested their time in it? Or worse, what if one or two well reasoned responses get mired in a largely superficial thread? What if the thread becomes a mix of feedback discussion and questions about modding and rules? It’s messy, and frankly, it’s better for a thread starter to start things off on the right foot, even if it means simply giving it another go (which is not hard!)

And look, another reason was that a question like ‘is all math a lie?’ implies some kind of intentional deceit or dishonesty, with all the provocation that that entails. I’ve no problem with provocative questions when provided with some context, but thrown out there with some banal comment like ‘well, what do you think?’ - well, sorry not sorry but that’s going to go almost immediately. Certainly more so than something like ‘What does the Categorial Imperative mean? Thx’ (don't any of you dare...).

I know, but it's a volunteer job and mods have lives outside TPF, so the onus is on posters to be responsible for that.

I imagine one of the reasons for banning brief OPs is to put off trolls from lazily lighting the touchpaper and standing back? OK, so deletion makes sense then.

But if an established poster makes a brief OP then OK, that is a bit lazy, but I bet that such threads almost always go on to generate bona fide discussion.

What about locking a thread and asking the OP to add something? Or at least messaging the OP that the thread has "unfortunately had to be deleted and please could you please try again with some more text..". It just seems a shame to lose posters over this sort of issue ... come back Jeremiah!!

I have no problem with that. It's just up to the mod, the situation and how much time they think they should put into it. I don't want to see @Jeremiah leave either but it just seems a trivial reason as, given @StreetlightX's description, the OP was obviously lacking. Maybe he'll change his mind.

I deleted it because it lacked any substantive content for discussion. — StreetlightX

My God! That's moose turd pie. It's good though.

I have published several non-academic articles in both online and print magazines and all of them were modified and edited without my permission to a specific design that it was no longer something I wrote; they had the same look, sound, effect as every other published article in the magazine that you may as well say the editor is the real author of all them. The process for publishing academic articles is focused primarily on the accuracy of the details and it is certainly more respectful.

No need to get upset. Sometimes I am writing on my dodgy Microsoft phone while on the tram and listening to my iPod while feeling annoyed at the funky smelling guy sitting next to me that when I re-read what I say afterwards to my everlasting horror, I am surprised streetlight didn't delete it.

Or at least messaging the OP that the thread has "unfortunately had to be deleted and please could you please try again with some more text..". — Jake Tarragon

I can't speak for the others, but saying "please" multiple times in the same sentence is not something that I'd do.

For the record, I would also have deleted it. Then I would have sent a private message explaining why.