Following accusations Apple has been deleting unfavorable messages from its Discussion Board, Crazy Apple Rumors Site has learned that Brent Daly, an Apple Discussion Board moderator, has deleted one of his own messages.
According to Daly, he believed the message he posted did not conform to the guidelines created by Apple for Discussion Board posts.
“It just seemed rather negative,” Daly said. “I don’t remember exactly how I got to this point, but I do remember I got pretty steamed after reading some complaints about the 17-inch monitor problems. Moderators are supposed to remain impartial, but I believe you can fall victim to the Stockholm Syndrome in this job.
“Anyway, I don’t know what came over me, but… I may have used the words ‘Jobs’, ‘douche’ and ‘bag’ in conjunction.”
Daly later came across his own offending message and summarily purged it. It was only when he received an email notifying him his message had been deleted because it did not conform to Apple’s guidelines, an auto-email generated by his deletion, that he realized the irony of his action.
“Still, after having had some time to calm down, I stand by my self-purging,” Daly said.
“I see hundreds of messages every day and after a while it’s easy to get them confused. Printer problems, application problems, different configurations…
“Sometimes I have nightmares that I’m drowning,” Daly confided. “I think that’s related to having to sort through all these messages day in and day out.
“It might also be related to that time I almost drowned. That’s what my therapist says, anyway.
“But, then,” Daly wondered, “why do I still love water parks? It doesn’t make any sense.”
Daly admitted that a loophole in the terms of use of Apple’s Discussion Boards designed to give moderators absolute discretion in deleting posts allows them to remove any post with the letter “a” in it.
“We can also ban any user who claims we gave them ‘a case of the vapors’,” he added.
“I don’t really know why that’s in there.”
Several sources indicated it stems from a disagreement Apple had in 1997 with a number of 5400 LC users who fancied themselves late 19th century upper class matrons. Fortunately for the company, most of them took their predilection so seriously that they caught tuberculosis, which was virulent in the late 1800s, and died.
Daly has decided to take the rest of the week off.