Moderator Comment Deletion - Why Deleted?

I have a question regarding comment deletion by moderation on the livefyre comment system.

Other than occasional (probably lame), attempts at being funny. I will generally participate in attempts in informed discussions on the articles at hand in comment sections.

Occasionally, I will provide researched and thought out opinions... only to have the comment deleted. When i say occasionally, I mean over like 5-10 years and througout the various comment systems you've had its happened to me a bunch of times and its always been annoying...

The reason for me writing this forum post was that I was participating in discussion:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/how-much-did-you-pay-for-this-irresistible-sid-meier-civilization-bundle/1100-6417530/?hubRefSrc=email#lf_comment=135951770

There is a reply to this comment which was deleted. It was a post where I posted some additional information on the state of Australian Nextgen games being $80-90 dollars... and the fact that region free games can be purchased for as little as $50 dollars. citing amazon, shipito.. and other sources. Also the decision to buy the entire console offshore which would save as much as $150 dollars.

I even complimented gamespot's localisation to Australia and mentioned that its the ONLY news site that I think did a good job of researching AU game pricing, citing articles at EB Expo's and more.

I dont appreciate spending like 5-10 minutes typing a comment with actual information only to have it deleted. Now. I did finish after the compliment to GS saying "we need somebody like GS to keep the bastards honest".... which is probably the reason for deletion. So theres the background.. heres my contention.

If you want to moderate comments. Why not automatically message the user with the reason a comment is moderated as a priviate message. Hell, you could even implement a warning system to ward off bad behavior which takes the moderation thing further. At least then said user with infration would have a copy of the comment/reply and you could just copy + paste it without the bad word or whatever. What is completely ridiculous is when a moderator (or automatic moderation filter for bad words)... just makes things dissapear.

Thats all i have really, most forums use this, you are using the comment service livefyre, presumably they have API's and this kind of thing would be easy, whether it was somebody doing this manually or automatic.

I looked into some of your comments. While most of your comments show up, there are a few that the system automatically marks them as spam or profane. I see nothing wrong with the some of the comments I came across so I added them in but it's highly suggested that you please keep profanity to a minimum.

Is it against the rules of the commenting system to mention a site like whirlpool via name rather than the actual link? I'm wondering whether that was the reason the comment in question was deleted... also... you have mentioned 'spam' as a deletion in the past. Yet as you cant post hyperlinks, i can only assume there could be 'spam' keywords.

I just noticed another comment dissappeared this evening. It was in a discussion on ME3 multiplayer / DAI multiplayer. I mentioned that I had written a fairly innovative post on reddit regarding using tri-def 3d and the 4k texture resolution packs for ME3, which got me back in and a tried the multiplayer. (I can assure you this is one amazing pc mod as even the makers of tri-def 3d in our email correspondence told me it was one of the most awesome things they had ever heard of, nor had it been written/blogged about before i made my post).

No link, just said you can "search for my post on reddit if you want to find the tridef 3d + 4k texture guide". Thats deleted for spam? I can kind of understand that being deleted in that context (sorta, as /r/masseffect is probably considered competition to Gamespot).

However, when i mentioned whirlpool by name in the OP above...there is no way a user is going to find out the important information on buying a PS4 through amazon to save the $150 dollars through gamespot. The best thing any user can do is go to whirlpool and read the experiences of users to make an informed choice. If GS did write about this, it would be asking for trouble. Advising users en-mass about a purchase decision of that much money is just going to cause backlast. You need a community/forum setting and then a user can look at the mass consensus and make a decision with 'caveat emptor' in mind.

If these kinds of comments are being automatically deleted then GS is doing a disservice to users because they cant ALWAYS provide the information a gamer needs, for local issues... unless gamespot want to change the focus onto forums instead of trollbait comment sections.. a user NEEDS whirlpool to make certain informed choices be it about ISPS.... Hardware Support and in this case a purchase decision. I think its going overboard to ban the names of these places outright.

The comment system itself it incredibly flawed. It usually picks up on certain words or phrases and automatically removes them as being spam.

I added that comment back in.

This has been happening to me too. I have had comments mysterious disappear even though they don't appear to contain anything untoward. Gamespot MUST implement some kind of notification system telling you when a post is deleted and why. There is no feedback system telling you what you did wrong, so how can you correct any behavior if you have no idea what is going on?

^It'd be a livefyre and gamespot joint notification most likely, unless you just want an email - in which case just livefyre could do it. I believe GS intends to dump the livefyre system and go back to an inhouse one in the future though..there's no time scale for when that might be atm (nor is it guaranteed that they won't change their mind before it happens) though.

Edit: The aim is to have livefyre replaced by E3, however there is no guarantee on that happening, it's merely a plan for the time being