Deleting posts because of the font used

Hey everyone! So, I just had one of my posts wiped from the "Our Word" thread over in the Linguistics subforum, and the reasoning they gave me was that I used a foreign script that most people here can't actually read. Look, I totally get that I messed up—I know we aren't supposed to be dropping foreign languages or different alphabets in here unless there's some super specific exception—but I honestly don't get why the whole post was nuked instead of just getting a warning or being flagged. It feels like saying a message is "unintelligible" to the majority isn't a big enough deal to justify deleting the entire thing, you know? Even if most folks can't parse it, there's always a small group of users who would find it perfectly clear and maybe even useful, so having it there shouldn't really be hurting anyone unless it’s actively making things a mess for everyone else. Could someone please walk me through why my post was such a huge issue that it deserved to be completely erased? Is it because it's genuinely distracting, or are you guys worried it'll kick off a whole debate in another language within that specific thread, or is it something else entirely?
Thanks in advance!

analogwalker5 said:Do you think the mods will actually step in if someone signs up and starts flooding the boards with posts in a language most of us here can't even wrap our heads around? I mean, I was just thinking about this the other day while I was grabbing coffee near Starbucks—it’s such a weird thought, right? Like, imagine walking into a local diner in Chicago and suddenly everyone starts speaking a dialect nobody recognizes. It would be so jarring! Anyway, just wondering if the admin team keeps an eye out for that kind of thing to keep the community vibe consistent. (like Turkish, Arabic, or Mandarin)? If that actually happens, man, I can only imagine the fallout. What kind of reaction are we even looking at? It’s gonna be wild. So, I just got hit with an instant ban. Like, totally out of nowhere. Just straight-up red cards everywhere. Honestly, it’s kind of wild how fast things can go south. It reminds me of that time I was playing pickup basketball in Chicago and one minute we were all having a blast, and the next, someone gets called for a technical and the whole vibe just shifts. One second you're cruising, the next you're sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else play. Anyway, yeah... direct ban. Total shutout. Deleting posts... you know, I was just sitting here thinking about how much digital clutter we all accumulate. It’s funny, really. You look back at stuff you wrote months ago and think, "Man, what was I even doing?" Sometimes you just want to hit that big red button and make it all vanish. Like cleaning out a garage on a Sunday morning—just tossing the old junk so you can actually breathe again. Does anyone else get that urge? Or am I just overthinking things today? Or... something else entirely? I mean, do you guys actually take a second to look at what this user is posting—like, maybe run it through Google Translate or something similar first? Or would you just assume he’s some random spammer or troll and hit him with a ban without even bothering to check if his messages actually make sense?
Thanks in advance!

analogwalker5 said:I haven't really seen posts quite like this before, so I'm just asking theoretically here. Honestly, I feel like it would be a good idea to go back and check what the user actually wrote first, but... I'm 99.9999% sure that any posts written in "exotic" languages are just bot spam. I mean, come on—no actual human being would bother posting on a subreddit like this in a language that nobody else here can even read.
So, I was just wondering... are there actually any "approved foreign languages" allowed on here? Or is everything strictly English? Just curious!

It won't be long now... Wait, I think someone actually wrote this... It’s right there in the same PDF. Honestly, I think you actually answered your own question, so I don't really get why you're stressing about getting that post deleted just because it's in Bulgarian. To most people on Reddit, that language feels just as exotic as Mandarin. No matter how wild it looks to you, it's basically just gibberish to the rest of us!

Look, I totally get that my previous post wasn't exactly top-tier, but seriously, why does it have to be nuked entirely? It feels like it would be way more productive to just leave it up and slap a warning on it if it actually crossed a line. Why go through the whole hassle of scrubbing it from the site? Is someone actually going to drop dead because of what I wrote?

analogwalker5 said:Look, I get it, my post wasn't exactly top-tier, but why go through the trouble of deleting it entirely? If it’s bad, just archive it or something if you have to. Why does it have to be scrubbed from the site? Is someone actually going to drop dead because of it?

Before the Reddit admins decided on the whole "scrubbing posts" thing, they actually checked to see if there was any correlation between deleting stuff and users actually dying from it. So, don't sweat it—nobody’s going to kick the bucket over a deleted post. Honestly, people were more likely to die from laughing too hard or being embarrassed that some of these posts were even still up.

So what’s the actual logic here then: how do you even decide which posts that break the rules get to stay up and earn someone a ban, and which ones just get tossed in the trash?

analogwalker5 said:So what’s the actual logic behind it then? Like, how do they decide which rule-breaking posts get to stay up and get flagged, and which ones just get wiped out entirely?

Honestly, in most cases, it really just comes down to a moderator's call, and that’s exactly what happened here. If someone drops a post in a foreign language or uses a different alphabet in a thread titled "Our Words," there's no point in keeping it—most people won't be able to make heads or tails of it, plus it's against the rules anyway. You can actually find a bunch more details about how this works in that other thread you started, which I've linked above.

rustydrifter10 said:Most of the time, it just comes down to how the moderator sees things, and honestly, that's exactly what happened here. If you drop a post in a different language or script on a thread titled "Our Language," it’s just not gonna fly because most people won't even know what you're saying, plus it's against the rules. You can find all the specifics about why that is in the thread linked above—which, if I recall, was actually started by you.

I guess I really should've just sent a DM instead of replying directly to the thread, since it feels totally weird to respond to someone from my own neck of the woods in any language other than our native one, you know? Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love the American language, but in a situation like this, I'd much rather use something else. My bad if I caused any headaches. Usually, when I'm talking to my Bulgarian buddies, I'll just hit them up privately if the message is basically just for them, mostly because I don't want to feel forced to stick to American in a public forum setting.