Post History

How should staff deal with posts critical of themselves that they want deleted?

Recently, we had a question asked about [priorities of the 'community team'](https://meta.codidact.com/questions/278266)[^1].

The poster then [self-answered](https://meta.codidact.com/questions/278266#answer-278304) (which is fine). This answer then got deleted[^2] and a different user asked [a question about that deletion](https://meta.codidact.com/questions/278310), which resulted in the answer getting edited and undeleted.

However, to be clear, this question is *not* about 'why was that question deleted'. What it *is* about is: **what does the community want us to do (and *not* do) in these circumstances?**

That is, if we have a post that's critical of the staff, if it satisfies the Code of Conduct it should absolutely stay up.

If there's a post attacking a particular user or group of users, the appropriate thing to do is to flag and let one of the mods/staff deal with it. If someone disagrees with the mod(s)/staff's actions, they can take it up with the [Arbitration & Review Panel](https://meta.codidact.com/questions/277346) or ask a question on meta.

However, if we have a post that's critical of the mods/staff but isn't in line with the Code of Conduct, what *should* we, as mods and staff do?

We could delete the question, but are we silencing users who are critical of us? (is there a point where we *can* unilaterally delete the question?) What about warning or suspending the user who wrote it (in a particularly bad case) Does editing the offending parts of the post give the same sorts of problems about silencing criticism?

The opposite tack would be to leave the post as-is unopposed but I (for one) don't want to suggest that rude (etc.) behaviour is acceptable. I don't want trolls to come along and be nasty to staff as staff are the only people they can be nasty to. I also don't want this to evolve into something where people assume truth because of lies repeated often enough.

What about passing every post critical of mods/staff to the Arbitration & Review Panel or posting on meta? Except, this is also open to abuse in the form of time wasting (and not just of the staff). Further, what happens if someone rants about the Review Panel?

Essentially, to rephrase the question, **how do we deal with our intrinsic bias in dealing with questions critical of staff that we feel should be edited or deleted?**

[^1]: I assume this is referring to everyone with the 'staff' tag/badge, but that's not overly relevant for this discussion anyway</sup>

[^2]: From my point of view (as someone with a 'staff' badge), the original form of the answer did deserve deletion/editing, as it (in the original form, in my opinion) isn't in line with the [Code of Conduct](https://meta.codidact.com/policy/code-of-conduct).