Thread Closing vs. Deletion

[Red Iron Crown]

I was reading a thread today in the Suggestions forum and when I went to open the next page the forum gave me a permission error. A bit of back and forth revealed that the thread had been deleted. I found this odd as most of the forums I frequent just close threads that are getting out of hand or too contentious. Often times these closed threads can serve as useful counterexamples for proper forum etiquette.

I was just wondering, what makes a thread worthy of deletion rather than merely closing it?

Don't take this as criticism of moderation, just curiosity as to how such decisions are made. I have the utmost respect for the moderators and the difficult and often thankless job they do.

I realize that this post might be construed as a violation of forum rule 3.4, but in my defense I don't know who I would contact directly as I don't know which mod removed the thread. If it is out of line please let me know.

[sjwt]

Deletion would be done on something that was braking the rules flat out, ie a hate thread, piracy etc..

I am not sure, but users may be able to delete their own threads if no one has posted in it by deleting the post.

[Tex_NL]

Since you're the one asking you're the one who knows best what that topic was about.

The only reason I can think of why a complete topic is deleted is if something very disturbing was said or displayed. Something worthy of an immediate perma-ban. Either that or it's just some forum glitch

Edit: Got ninja'd.

[Red Iron Crown]

It didn't fall into any of those categories, at least in the pages I was able to read (thread was 12 pages long). Though I suppose it is possible the thread went nuts later on.

[Red Iron Crown]

Weird, now the thread is back, but with one fewer page. I wonder what happened?

[KasperVld]

It was cleaned up - part of the thread completely derailed and ended up in a small group of people insulting eachother.