Just wanted to apologize for deraiiling your thread.
Was not my intention.

I think you request the admin to delete the post.  They will often do it, though it could take hours/days for them to get around to it.  
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I believe it is under "Report this post" then fill out your reasons.

People get pissed at things all the time and the boards are a good place to vent. As long as your rant is "on topic" and it most certainly was,  there is NOTHING at all wrong with venting a bit.

 
I am sorry none of us had any helpful advice. Isn't it better that it "devolved into drivel" than if we simply ignored your post since none of us had a useful answer?

and here is the reason.  Regardless of the twists and turns a thread takes, other members have taken their time to respond or join the conversation. When you take down a whole thread, you made their time and contribution worthless for EVERYONE, not just the responses you didn't like. Its very disrespectful to other TER members, and makes you look like the board Nazi.   I have both started and joined some train wrecks myself, but I will just walk away and let the others have their fun with the topic once I get a few responses that are worthwhile.  If not, you can join in at any point and try to steer it back to get more of the kinds of responses you want, but shit-canning the whole thread does not encourage people to participate in future threads of yours. What is the point if there is a likelihood from your past history that the thread will disappear.  There was a guy on the Kgirl board that used to do that, and he soon found when he put of up question, no one would answer because of his propensity for taking it down the next day. Trust me that you don't want a reputation as a post-puller.  Of all the sites that are considered some form of "social media", TER is one of the last bastions of truly free speech without censorship.  Just follow the posting guidelines.  We should all embrace it.  

I’ll answer your question and tell you how to do it. However, first I actually agree with most of the other posters. I say just leave it, and let it run it’s course. I don’t believe in deleting a post just because the thread took a turn you didn’t like. I also looked at your thread on the Kgirl board that I assume you were talking about and it doesn’t look bad at all.

While I don’t think you should try to delete that post, Sometimes there are good reasons to delete a post, and there are ways to do it.  

The easiest way is to delete it yourself if it was posted within the last 4 hours and is still in edit mode. To do that, click on “edit my post,” physically delete all the content in the body, and delete the subject line and replace it with the word “delete,” then hit submit.  The post will go into moderation and admin will delete it instead of reposting. All replies below it will be gone too.  

If it’s past the 4 hour edit window then you have to hit “report this post” and give admin a good reason to delete it. Then it is up to them whether they agree with your reasoning or not.

Ans it's usually by the same cast of characters. Look, a little side bar is ok but when the main topic then isn't the main topic that's when the thread just becomes a pissing contest.  
Some guys just need to get their ego in check and I wish the Moderators of this board would clapped down, at least just alittle.....But good luck on that

and the ability to edit your post is still listed under the Action menu, just delete all the text, and put "deleted" in the subject line.

Otherwise, ask Admin to do so, which is iffy.

These are truly discussion boards -- not a really a threaded topic board. The entire architecture of the software seems distinctly different from any of the bulletin board type s/w one sees in most other online forums.  I think it mostly best to think of being at a party -- your comment may well just spark a discussion that goes quite far from the original topic.

 
There is clearly good an bad in taking such an approach but I think it aptly describes how people here act. As such for those used to forums where the person originally creating the root of the thread should expect everyone will either follow in line or go elsewhere/start their own thread will be surprised by what occurs.

 
I do get that often a question is asked or a point is attempt to be made or someone is venting and just wants people to tell them they are right and X should not happen. So while I do think we need certain structure and bounds I think the best view is what is the name of the discussion board -- not really the subject of the first post in the thread -- though clearly one should expect them to at least be relevant to something that was written in the body or the post.

 
So I would approach the question of deleting posts and threads from the "Did *I* write something I want removed?" and not really what did anyone else have to say.

First, do you feel any better with the answers provided?

The question I do want to ask is perhaps a more philosophical one regarding just how TER discussion boards "should" work. Is you view that the OP topis defines the scope of discussion? In which case would locking the subject line for ALL replies be the right thing to do. Then any response that does not strictly address the OS (original subject) directly would be either blocked by moderators or able to be deleted as off topic? If deleted would that be something the OPer would have authority on or would it be assumed the responsibility for TER admins via a problem report/contact us request?

What does N-Joy-11 have to do with perfume?