Why was a topic removed?

It was probably because it had nothing to do with the watch and it was just the band you mentioned. No clue though.
You can contact support@applevis.com to find out.

The thread referred to was removed because the first post and some of the replies from the OP were spam to direct people towards Watch bands from a specific seller on Amazon.

When first posted, we could not be completely certain that it was spam, so gave the poster the benefit of the doubt (even though there were also certain hints in the user's account that they were not genuine).

However, when that user came back over the next 24 hours and started 2 more threads and posted replies to the original thread, all of which essentially said how great the bands were from this same Amazon seller .. well, that removed any doubt as to whether this was a spammer.

So, of course people can talk on here about Watch bands. There are already existing forum threads which do just that.

However, we would ask that if you notice that a post has been removed, you give us the benefit of the doubt and assume that it was done for a valid reason. Which, we certainly believe was the case here.

I can understand why the post could be removed now.
I do also believe it says it in the rules, something about not promoting other products? Not sure though.

Hi.
One of the reasons for I don't post much here on the forum is because of the way topics get removed or moved without the admins posting about it, and the reason for doing so. I'm not saying this to start a flaimwar, but it really demotivates me from posting. One way the admins could make this much better is by writing a comment in the actual thread, telling what is wrong, what is going to happen so people get the reason for doing so, and then take the action.
For me, just removing threads and moving threads without telling the poster about it or writing a comment to inform people about the action and why is really not a good thing.
Again, I'm not criticizing anyone. I'm just trying to say how I feel about this, and give some suggestions on how to do this better in my opinion.

So essentially in what you are asking is that we post to that thread that this thread is about to be removed for various reasons that we felt was in the best interest. Correct? If so, may I ask what would be that timeframe before we would remove something like that. I'm afraid that even if we gave some notice like a day or three or even seven days that we will continue to get people that will get upset and throw their hands up in the air. It just seems that people don't trust AppleVis and their judgements. I assure you that we do take this very serious and we are very sorry for any inconvenience that were caused to those innocent users. Believe me we will not remove things if we can help it. This particular incident was in the works for several days in the making so it was a slow motion before we were able to know for a fact that this was a work of a spammer. Which really sucks because innocent people were involved in that thread and to have it only disappear. I completely understand but what you are asking iisn't just something that has a simple solution to it. Sometimes we will get a post that is need of an instant removal. You would have lots of garbage and spammer on the main page on AppleVis. Then we will get complaints of all of the bad posting to only have us leaving a comment that has to be seen for several days we can remove it because people want to know that we will be removing this post. It's just not reasonable to ask. The one thing I can only emphasis with what AppleVis mentioned earlier is that you trust us. We certainly do have good reasons for the things we do. Please contact us via our contact email for any questions that you may have. We will get back with you and try to help you in where we can and possibly answer why something was done. As for in your case I am really sorry if you have seen this happen to you and caused you not want to post or participate in something on AppleVis on something we have done. I certainly want to know about that as that is the last thing we want any user to feel. If you would please contact us about the things you have found we have moved by you. We want to know! Thanks!

I think the rules or stipulations are perfectly clear. You only have to read what's allowed and what is not allowed, what is considered proper or improper to post before doing so. I think that the AppleVis community works very hard to give us the best they can and do the best they can for all of us. I think all of us who post here should be thankful that we have this place where we can all help each other and learn.

Oh, a couple of more things to add that I have missed. We do get people asking us why we change people's original Title to a post. First, keep in mind that we will never change or edit anyone's original content. We may change people's Title on a post if the subject line does not clearly describe the question/issue/topic at hand. The more descriptive a subject line is, the more likely people are to read the post. This is not very often that we do this. The other common questions is why we have moved a post to another post. This is very simple to answer. This simply simplify things on the site. If we have already had a discussion on something to only be re-created for another post in a reasonable short amount of time. We will then merge the two posting together. This not only simplify things on the site but it also give our users a single place of origin to read the entire discussion on the same or similar posting. It just clutters things up when and if we have three separate posting on the same subject. In this case we do not contact all of the people involved in this merge. It would be rather silly for us to contact all of the people involved in that posting. Especially when there are many users that are involved. Hopes that helps to understand more of the reasons that we do.

thanks.

Fair enough. I won't complain more about this, and I'm sorry if I explained myself wrong.
Here is an example on what I mean: If I create a topic, I don't expect to have it moved, or have my post copied into an other discussion. I fully respect the admins job of keeping everything organized. I didn't said you should reach out to all the posters privately before moving a topic. It can be done much simpler. If there are multiple topics about the same thing, the topic could be closed by a comment with the link where the answer could be found.
I'm not saying any bad things about the admins or the Applevis Website, I'm really glad it is here. But this is the only place I've seen topics and peoples posts being moved like this.
It seems like people like this, so I'm done complaining about it. But remember, this topic here wouldn't have been made, if the topic the poster talks about got closed with the comment on why doing so.

To place this discussion into some sort of perspective, there are probably no more than 1 or 2 instances in a typical year when topics are merged.

As for completely removing posts. Yes, spam and malicious posts are deleted and we do not notify the poster or the community when it is done. There is simply no good reason to do so.

If a post from a genuine user has to be removed - for example because it is off-topic for AppleVis - the poster is notified. Typically, this rarely happens more than once or twice a month; and its not uncommon for several months to pass between occurrences.

As for moving forum topics to the appropriate area of the forum, this happens typically no more than 2 or 3 times per week, and is something that I would expect to be done in any other forum where there is active moderation. It's simply good practice and is in the best interest of all concerned.