I also have been here for a few years, both in lurking and posting. I've seen threads get deleted (some for good reason) and threads get locked (many for good reason). This, however, is one of those situations where the thread being deleted is NOT a good reason. I agree with the above posters, if you were threatened by lawsuit, come out and say so. I'm hopeful that someone was smart enough to screenshot/archive the thread before it was deleted by said mods.

Rick - First, I would like to thank you for your tremendously gutsy efforts over the past couple of years to bring sensible moderation to this board. The discourse has improved tremendously. Active, intelligent, unbiased moderation can make a difference.

For those who have archived the threads that have been disappeared, please post them on deleted RYPN on facebook. Never thought I'd say this but maybe Wilkins had a point.

If you can look at the deleted posts, note that they stayed pretty civil until the defendant in the case being discussed began to troll the discussions, both on the board and evidently via PM, on or about Sunday, December 6. There was also a thread started by one who purported to be his employee. It was mainly the responses to his trolling that ran afoul of what Rick's moderation has been attempting to achieve. In short, you've been played. These topics have a target on their backs from day one and to respond to the defendant in the manner that many of you did doomed the valuable information in those posts to oblivion.

Dennis- your thread was a great idea. Due diligence in selecting a contractor is of vital importance whether it be for an operational locomotive restoration or a home renovation. It always costs three times as much to do it right the second time and many of us do not have the cash to pony up. Again, it was only when the defendant trolled your thread, claiming (as usual) that it was all about him, that the thread went south and was open to attack by negligent moderation.

JR - I disagree. It is never a good idea to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Read quickly. It is all ephemeral.

Please note that the threads in question have been restored in their entirety, with no editing or deletions.

Yes, some interesting and valuable discussions have been nuked lately. Options exist outside of "sledgehammer"...

There was one thread that derailed by an obvious troll that was deleted outright, rather than simply removing his profane comments (which I think should have been preserved as they were a textbook demonstration of troll tactics...)

And I just checked and it has not been restored...

I wasn't going to say anything about forum censorship, just fume about it privately, because overall I find being on this forum to be more good than not. I also feel unfairly censored at times.

A couple of months ago a thread was started by our new Eastern European friend, and I spent about two hours carefully crafting an answer to one of his questions about U. S. transportation policy that I felt used my lifetime of experience and education about as well as anything I've ever written. After about 24 hours the ENTIRE topic disappeared. As the message said when I tried to look it up, "This Topic Does Not Exist". I know very well that it was deleted because I expressed a couple of progressive ideas and opinions, but never said anything disparaging about any individual on this forum, or really any public personality as well. There are a couple of people on here who get to spew their Libertarian drivel without repercussions, but let anyone with different sensibilities express their view and they get swatted down immediately and without comment. If you want to prohibit political discussions entirely, then make it stated policy, but don't discriminate on the basis of ideology. I'm tired of tippy-toeing around about being a progressive who believes that it is a legitimate function of government to make the lives of ordinary people better through policy and spending, as stated in Article I, Section 8 of the U. S. Constitution: ..."[T]o provide for the general welfare". My outlook is very much like that of the government of our Danish contributor, not former Soviet Russia.

I too agree with Howard.

And I too wondered about the one thread that was started by our eastern European poster and then disappeared.

I also enjoy hearing from people who live in different countries with different political and economic philosophies. I think not judging but simply listening and trying to understand the differences is a good thing to do.... and leads to bringing us closer provided we don't try to force each other apart. We often confuse the idea of patriotism with arrogance and our national mythology - especially if we only learned edited history in school - without taking into consideration that people from different cultures have different perspectives that may be as natural for them as ours are to us, and none is the only right way of life.

It occurs to this registered Libertarian that:

1) There are other possible explanations for the "disappearance" of a thread (that I can't remember) other than "the vast right-wing conspiracy"--for all I know the thread derailed profoundly from "rail preservation" to "politics." "Occam's Razor" probably applies here, not some "conspiracy."

2) Verbally attacking the political views of others is a sure-fire way to lose any sympathy or respect you may garner for your views or self-proclaimed "victimhood"--especially from someone whose "Libertarian drivel" otherwise defends to our deaths your right to express your views.

Just a couple of notes on the general subject:

When I resuscitated active moderation on the steam_tech Yahoo group, the tools included the ability for moderators both to edit posts and to interject comments or notes in any post making it 'to the board'. I made considerable, but I thought balanced, use of this, both to correct typos or poor syntax silently in the background (as many participants did not have English as a familiar language and to explain potential contention as a factor unimportant to the sense of a particular discussion.

More recent interpretations of 'forum' posting involves the concept (which I have to assume has valid legal precedent and force, although I don't know the applicable statute(s) that each post is the poster's sole intellectual property, and moderators have no authority to change anything -- only to hold it from being posted, or delete it in its entirety. I can see this as valuable in many cases of 'bad moderation' -- including some eras I've watched on Kalmbach forums -- but it has the lamentable consequence that any post made with remarks or tone that violates TOS or common decency can't be edited to preserve continuity or context of a particular thread -- it can only be deleted, or referred back to the originator for self-redaction before reposting (at which point the automatic timestamping and thread priority get thrown out of whack). Even selectively removing 'bad actor' posts from a given thread, although I think still possible as a moderator action, involves a great deal of time and likely some loss of overall content or context.

To claim that the threads in question only turned insulting after Mr. Rimmasch started participating is, frankly, ridiculous, and even a cursory examination of the language and rhetoric in many of the posts demonstrates this easily. Not that this defends Mr. Rimmasch against criticism of the ways in which he chose to respond, or not, to the very real substantive issues of the present condition of the locomotive, or of escalating the level of non-discourse with complaints of a conspiracy against him personally, no matter how justified that perception might be. If it is accurate -- and I see no objective reason to say otherwise at this point -- that his legal counsel advised him 'not to comment on the details' ... that is what he should have done, and left the dogs to howl until such time as he could explain the details. I'm not going to comment on the actual cause until I have better specific information on a couple of points, but the principal thing to be criticizing Wasatch for at this time is inadequate project management and milestone/event documentation, not intentionally shoddy or knowingly-excused work. Perhaps the time will come that deeper criticism can be fairly made; I don't really know as I wasn't there. And while I do agree this matter shouldn't be laid to rest under some perpetual gag order or other threat, or via some fabulated idea that the preservation community at large has its own version of the blue line, I also think that engaging in schadenfreude trolling under the guise of 'getting an admission of The Truth is not something this board or this community should particularly tolerate ... especially not as increasingly displayed in the dumpster-fire threads that were transiently deleted.

I think the 'appeals' process at this point is likely to be fairly short and fairly direct, and we can take up the discussion when that has run its due course. After that point is when any supposition or arguments about "connivance" in the "preservation community" or artificial gag orders to keep answers inaccessible can be made. I'm quite certain there are people who will be watching, and will not be slow to make them, once Mr. Rimmasch finds himself freed to make appropriate arguments.

It seems incumbent upon me to remind all, especially younger readers/members here, that this now-archaic forum is essentially all that remains from a once far better website that was reduced to this vestigial, skeletal remnant in large part by its abandonment by a former board of directors that attempted to keep it functioning as a useful resource like the old Locomotive & Railway Preservation Magazine.

It was abandoned by them largely because of the threats of personal litigation by an oft-lauded owner of a certain Eastern 4-8-4 against the members of the BOD, for perceived sleights against him in this very forum. For some unknown reason, said owner is still permitted membership here......

So the idea that someone with some money could start litigation against perceived libel/slander in order to shut down this forum is hardly delusional..................

I said that, "they stayed pretty civil". Some folks leaned in a bit more than Miss Manners but it got toxic after the trolling began. For one of the "threads in question", Dennis' thread on investigating contractors, your statement is false. In fact, Dennis specifically stated that his was a general interest raised by the other thread but not specifically about the subject matter of the other thread. Dennis' thread only takes a turn after the defendant in the case in question trolls it and asserts that it is really it all about him.

My sympathies. Same thing has happened to me many times. If anyone wants to talk politics, great, as long as it relates to a rail preservation topic. Otherwise, I don't give a rat's ass about anyone's political affiliation or religious beliefs.

Actually, I hadn't noticed this was among the locked and deleted threads, as it began and wound up as a substantive discussion about FOIA requests. I see little objective evidence of "trolling" in a response that actually states that assistance with documenting FOIA requests -- specifically, in fact, in obtaining FRA inspection reports concerning Wasatch -- would be forthcoming on PM request. In my opinion it was a mistake even to lock that thread, let alone delete it -- I'd chalk it up to overreaction on the part of extraordinarily goaded mods.

Now, there is one curious thing in that thread: the idea, apparently stated as fact by Dennis, that the report pages posted by Matt Austin were the FRA report, and more particularly the implication that the pictures in it were taken by a FRA inspector. It has been my understanding that neither of these things is the case; the report was an expert-witness presentation by Mr. Sobczynski as 'work product' of his consultancy, and the origin and provenance of the exhibits are not yet confirmed to have been taken as part of an FRA inspection. While the time for Wasatch to make comments on this was during the arbitration hearing itself, the report does not really establish the (nontrivial, to me at least) proof that Wasatch personnel directly did the illustrated 'work' or even supervised it directly with intent to allow poor work.

That's by no means an indication that, in fact, there were no problems with how Wasatch oversaw work -- just that it's too early to draw, quarter and burn them presumptively as being criminally incompetent or reckless as workmen or as 'experts' providing direct oversight of workmen. That time, as I said, will come if it comes. At this point I'm more interested in identifying anyone actually committing much of the physical work evident on that locomotive, whoever they were -- they are the 'bad actors' that need to be outed with indignation.

The FOIA thread even if we treat Mr. Rimmasch's comments as distractions, certainly never approaches the level of escalating overt insult and innuendo in the threads directly concerning Wasatch's performance or lack of same while contracted to work on #14. The initial and longest thread is the one with the most evidence of this in the ways I said.

At the risk of getting this locked by Randy there needs to be clarification. There are two reports, and perhaps you got confused, I know I did.

1. The FRA conducted a two day inspection over April 27-28 with representatives of WRC and the railroad present. It generated a report and photographs. The loose photos posted are from the FRA inspection file, obtained via a FOIA request.

2. There was an expert report, prepared for litigation by Jason S., which also has photos incorporated into it.

Randy will apparently not be locking it; he says he's stepping away not only from moderation but site administration.

As I understand the situation, it is possible that the FRA report in question can be provided in the same general way that Matt Austin did for the Sobczynski technical report. I do not know if Doug or Rick have objections to posting links to a file received pursuant to a valid FOIA request.

A possible alternative, as mentioned in Dennis' thread fairly early on, is to provide the specific information to locate the report in the FRA's system, and download it from there. I suspect that information is already known and documented and can be posted here without 'difficulties'.