I have intermittently been involved in discussions on this forum in which the entire thread is later deleted by a forum administrator.
I appreciate some threads stray into areas which are deemed not appropriate for this public forum, so removing them from the public forum is a reasonable forum administrator action.
The disadvantage in doing so is sometimes the thread involves both appropriate and inappropriate material and generation the forum posts has involved significant time and effort by forum members.
A better administrator action in my opinion would be to make the thread a private thread only involving those who have already participated in the thread. That gives all forum users the ability to use the valid content they have created elsewhere if appropriate, and also better understand what makes a thread inappropriate.
I agree that forum users should have some warning about threads that are to be deleted.
My suggestion would be that a new category be created for threads that are to be deleted with a 30 day timeframe before the deletion occurs.
This will allow all forum users to review these topics and retain any information in their own records if they deem that it would be useful to them.
There are many threads that remain on the forum that no longer have any relevance due to changes and improvements to Manager and it would serve to benefit all users if these were deleted.
For everyone’s information, deletion of a topic is extremely rare. In fact, if there have been significant responses, a topic literally cannot be deleted. The forum software will not allow it.
What you refer to is more likely to be unlisting. Unlisted topics can still be viewed. They can even be responded to if you know the subject, as long as they have not been closed. They just don’t show up in normal views.