I'm not commenting on the topic of this thread, but can admins be a little less handsy with the 'delete post' button?

It's irritating to come back into a thread that you were reading a previous day, notice that it has had a fair few new posts added to it, and then see that a lot of the posts have actually been deleted, meaning that the reader (well, me) is behind on what's happening, and doesn't know what's most recently discussed, which makes you feel like you've missed out on something important, and adding a new post may be pointless as you don't know if it's already been discussed, making you look stupid.
This is especially bad when you look at the fact that the forum is pretty quiet anyway, bar the gifs thread and threads like this.
When the deleted posts are in threads such as this one, it gives me an impression that the main reason the post was deleted was due to the fact that the opinion behind it is different to that of the admin deleting it, so they delete the post as they think it as being stupid or irrelevant, when it might not be. This cuts down and unneccesarily narrows discussion.
I also get the impression that it may be deleted because of the rept*tive-ness of the argument in the post. Yes, I know the similar stuff comes up all the time, and it gets old, but that's how you argue - by repeating and explaining/discussion your opinion.

I can understand a post being deleted if it's pretty offensive or libelous, but in a thread with arguments such as this I'd prefer the posts to be kept in.
If a post has a slightly offensive bit to it, as well as arguing the person's point/side, then how about merely adding a quick edit? deleting the offensive bit and keeping the rest, but just leaving a note in it? Because this is really starting to irritate me.

I'm not commenting on this thread, because I just don't know enough about it. I don't know Mike/Raw very well, their really dominant period was whilst I wasn't here. I've heard good and bad enough about them both, too.  I can also see that some of it is friends sticking up for friends.
However, some posts (not Andy's, and i'm not always reffering to this thread) sound like they're posted just to annoy.
On the other side of it, I can see how the repet*tivness of it will annoy the admins, but they often sound like a brick wall - you don't get a choice in the matter, what they think is right. At least in responses in threads like these they do.
I understand how the repetiveness will make you lose your patience a bit, though.
And I can see a bit of your point about repeated chances, and not trusting, and yes sometimes it just seems like people want to see how flexible you are and how much you can bend the rules a bit.

But I don't know enough to really argue either side. I can see a bit of both arguments, I can get annoyed by both sides.

So I'm being neutral. So I'm being Switzerland.

And I don't know if this post actually says anything or whether it's a waste of time.