I tried to give a reply in a discussion thread that was talking about a project I am part of. I connected my email to show I’m part of the team and gave what I thought was a detailed answer with links (not more than 2 as it’s the limit), then my reply went to “Waiting for Moderator approval” and now its over 24h later and the reply and any sign of it disappeared. Its nowhere to be found, neither in draft nor in activity, nor is there any update on the moderation decision.
I totally get it if Mods are already swamped and need more time. But since the reply itself disappeared I was wondering if something else happened? Maybe I am doing something wrong?
Violated the guidelines somehow (though from your description that sounds unlikely, and I’d think they’d reach out to you and/or ban you depending on the severity)
Triggered some form of auto moderator, as once happened to me, though this also seems a bit unlikely since in my experience, that just leads the post needing approval, which happens regardless for new users.
Are in the clear and just need to wait for them to get around to looking at your post. I think this is probably the case. As for why you can’t find your post anymore… maybe it’s just poor UI design on Discourse? I don’t have posts that need approval very often, so I don’t remember what it was like.
If we want to assume that your post has been looked at and was silently rejected (possible!), we could speculate as to why. Now, without having looked into your project or that thread much at all, if I were to speculate based on this post itself, my best guess would be that your post appeared to be generated by an LLM. I don’t think this post looks like it was generated by an LLM, but by process of elimination, that seems like the most likely reason. Most of the other guidelines are about being civil, which I think you are being now and have no reason to think you weren’t in the post you describe. But I will reiterate that this is based on the assumption that your post was rejected as being in violation of the guidelines, which I already do not think is the case based on the information you have provided (and of course, appearing to be LLM-generated is different than actually being LLM-generated; even if this were the case, it may just be a mistake founded on some manner of unusual formatting in your post).
It could also be some mysterious other thing I’m not thinking of, of course. Unfortunately, I think the best course of action is to keep waiting for now.
Thanks soo much for the quick answer hashcatHitman!!
I read the guidelines and could not see a reason for my post to have been violating them Unless it was maybe too long of a reply. I will shorten in a bit a try reposting it in that case!
I will wait a bit more before trying to post again, maybe you are right and it is just a UI issue not showing that mod approval process is still ongoing!
As for the LLM assumption (a normal guess nowadays haha), I can assure you that zero chatbot was used in my answer! I write for a living (academic) so I take pride in my writing / writing on my own So its probably not that!
Not impossible, but I will say I have read and written some very long replies around here. I think in practice, long replies are usually fine as long as they aren’t devoid of content. Your reply, as described, sounds like it would generally be a welcome addition.
Merely speculation! As moderators are human, it’s entirely possible for posts to be misclassified as such.
Unless it was maybe too long of a reply. I will shorten in a bit a try reposting it in that case!
So its probably not that!