Why are some statements closed or deleted?

Some statements need improvement, are unsuitable for the purpose of Dignitas or do not bring new information. Privileged users and moderators can vote, as the case may be, to close them, to mark them as duplicates or to delete them.

Once a statement is closed or deleted, it will automatically be flagged for reopening if it is edited within the first 3 days of its addition. Moderators can also reopen it directly.

What is a closed statement?insert_link

A closed statement continues to be visible to all users, but no longer accepts answers. It can still be voted on and flagged.

The decision to close a statement stems from a flag for one of the reasons:

• The statement is off-topic: it pertains to the author's private life, it is an opinion or it is too general to have a truth value.
• The statement is unverifiable: it is not obvious that the purported author even made the statement. When adding a statement to Dignitas, it's a good idea to list at least one large news site that records the statement.
• The statement is of poor quality: it has serious flaws in formatting, in spelling, in logic structure or other defects that cannot be fixed by editing.
• Other reasons: when a reviewer votes to close the statement, Dignitas encourages him or her to briefly motivate his or her decision.

What is a duplicate statement?insert_link

A special type of closure is marking a statement as a duplicate, if the statement is already recorded in Dignitas. In this case, a message will appear to redirect readers to the original statement.

To prevent duplicate statements, we recommend searching for the statement (from the search box) to see if it was already added to Dignitas. The list of all of a politician's statements can be found on the politician's profile page.

What is a deleted statement?insert_link

A deleted statement is only visible to its author and to moderators. It can still be voted on, but can no longer be flagged.

The decision to delete a statement stems from a flag for one of the reasons:

• The statement is spam, meaning it advertises a product or a service.
• The statement contains obscenities, insults or any other messages that have no useful content (for example qwqweqwqeeqwe).

Additionally, the user who added the statement can delete it. However, we do not want users to work on writing responses to a statement that can be deleted unilaterally. Therefore, there are two situations when users cannot delete their own statements:

• The statement received multiple responses or
• The statement received only one answer that has a positive score.