You should be more consistent in how you apply your restrictions, as I was simply
continuing an existing discussion. There were a number of related posts which
had not been "rejected and deleted". You may be assured that I will not make
the same mistake again. I may even think twice before recommending PHP to my
employer or clients again.
You clearly have the right to maintain your product and your web site any way
you want. But this action by Vincent, and the snippy tone of his note, left
a very bad taste in my mouth.
I do not appreciate being singled out as an idiot.
First of all the reply you received is an automated one, every single person who gets his/her note deleted receives this very same reply. If it seems to be too intrusive, then it is a common problem for every single person who get his/her note deleted.
Second we have a note maintainer mailing list, which gets new note postings automatically. There, note maintaners can decide immediately on a note's status, whether it should be deleted or left as is. This is without reading all the other notes, and any conversation the note relpies to or continues.
As our note submission guidelines state, the notes are not for asking questions, not to reply to questions. The notes are to add information to the maunal. If you experience a problem with a function, you have plenty of places to ask (http://php.net/support).
Our note maintainers try to keep the notes following the guidelines. The fact that someone else's note does not confirm to these guidelines, does not mean that any other note can bypass them. Reading all notes on a page, and singling out discussions, and worthless ones takes much more time then deleting the new notes coming in. I can assure you that sometime, the inappropriate notes will be deleted. Till then, any note in which someone asks questions and replies to questions will be deleted.
Every one of our note maintainers work on a voluntary basis. They would have been able to find better things to do with their family, kids, etc. I strongly beleive that you would be distracted if there would be no note moderation, and you would need to find out what note is worth reading from the huge number of notes left on the manual pages.
I would like to suggest you ask your support questions at one of our mailing lists, the newgroups, IRC, forums, or any other place. The manual user notes are not the place to ask support questions.
Regards,
Gabor Hojtsy (one webmaster also working as a volunteer)