PDF Tourism - How to delete posts?

Why the hell did they delete my post in the Travel PDF section about volunteering in Africa?
What rules did I even break with that post? I’m asking someone in charge to please take a look whenever you get a chance.

ruggedseal19 said:Why was my post deleted from the Travel subforum? The topic was volunteering in Africa.
Which rules did I break? I'm asking for an admin to look into this when they have a moment.

I'm the one who deleted your post. You started bringing politics into the Travel section again, and I already told you we don't do that here.

If you want to talk politics, go to the forum specifically designed for it. By the way, you just got a warning and some spam points on that thread too.

Look, in the good old tradition of being totally clueless, you clearly don't get what politics even means, let alone what it looks like when someone starts playing political games. It feels like that same old soft-handed moderation from before, just wrapped up in a shiny new package. Like, I already said in my post that volunteering basically doesn't count as tourism—except maybe for that tiny part where someone wants to act like a tourist during their downtime (whether they're volunteering or fighting a war, honestly, it's the same thing), which obviously isn't a "tourist trip." The whole topic has nothing to do with tourism. And that's enough for you to delete my post? Seriously? Fine, either restore the deleted post or moderate properly by moving this entire thread to the right sub-forum.

Maybe someone actually in charge—someone who actually understands what politicization is or how tourism works—should take a look at this. You admitted once before that you don't know anything about this field. Now, I'm starting to think you don't even get tourism as a social phenomenon. Sure, you probably travel, but being a traveler doesn't suddenly make you an expert on tourism management.

You can try to justify your "activism" all you want, but everyone sees right through you. Phrases like...

has anyone actually planned on going to war "in the name of peace" in places like Afghanistan, Syria, or Ukraine...

...clearly expose what kind of Trojan horse you are, no matter how you wrap it up. You won't get away with it here. Like I said before, go over to some political news site and talk politics with the big shots instead of bringing it to a travel forum. Every time you pivot to politics, I’ll wipe it out so fast you'll realize you wasted your breath.

Bringing up the former moderator is completely unnecessary. She was respected by the vast majority of users active in US tourism back then. Myself included. But I am certainly not carrying out some soft terror campaign by a former moderator disguised in new clothes. Let the authorities take a look and make their judgment. It's fine by me.

The thread was started long before I became a mod, but since it's at least tangentially related to travel, I think it should stay. However, the discussion itself needs to remain within the scope of travel and tourism.

By the way, I've worked in management within the US tourism industry for over 20 years across several continents, so I know my stuff. I only said that I wasn't an expert on the specific niche of domestic rentals and such.

Of course the analogy makes sense. That was the whole point! I’m comparing two totally different extremes just to show how ridiculous this entire debate about tourism has become.
Look, just because one person travels to a war zone and another travels to help a community doesn't mean volunteering belongs in a tourism thread. One's framed positively, the other's negative, but they both fall under the same umbrella. I don't get why this is so hard to grasp. Do you seriously not see the difference between a traveler and a tourist?

In both scenarios, the person is basically sightseeing during their downtime away from their main job—which isn't tourism, obviously. My post, which you deleted by the way, was meant to highlight exactly that. It wasn't some political rant. So, I think you should either restore my post (if you actually want to keep this tourism thread alive) or just move the whole discussion to a more appropriate sub-forum. Moving it would definitely be the better call.

ruggedseal19 said:The analogy is obvious, obviously.

That analogy isn't even necessary. I guess it might not be logical either, but I won't get into that here because I'd just end up going off-topic for no reason.

Keep the focus on Tourism, and keep this discussion strictly within the scope of tourism.

If you want, maybe you could start a similar thread somewhere else and say whatever you want there. Go ahead, be my guest! Just not in the Tourism section.

You clearly have no clue.
Let's get one thing straight: volunteering isn't even free anymore. I mean, sure, it can be a total grind, but international volunteering almost always comes with some kind of symbolic pay. And if you're talking about specific programs, like certain UN initiatives or professional volunteer roles, those people are actually getting paid pretty damn well.

Professional volunteers are on a salary 365 days a year. They have set hours, benefits, and all the other contractual obligations you'd expect,
plus there's this whole corporate volunteering thing where big companies hire help to organize their events. Honestly, that’s one of the most ridiculous parts of modern volunteering... and yeah, that applies to the US too. So, the comparison between war and peace isn't just obvious—it's the entire foundation for understanding the issue. But hey, you probably just whipped that little response together in two clicks because you got all worked up over nothing.

(This is a response to an edited part of the post that disappeared in the meantime)

Yesterday’s deleted post was taken down for good reason (that whole bit about white racism was totally unnecessary and just derailed the conversation away from tourism).

Today's post got nuked and you got a card because you were picking at the mods—honestly, I would've given you a card myself, though I see Chris Myers was a bit more lenient since it was just off-topic. Either way, both posts were rightfully removed.

If you keep trying to drag politics into the tourism discussion, expect a ban. I don't want it to get to the point where you aren't just getting a warning first.