You can certainly ask but usually there's not much point since generally an unnecessary thread will soon just scroll off the recent posts list and be forgotten.

There is a way to be able to delete and even do some level of moderation on your own posts but it's complicated and most folks don't want to bother with it. Basically it requires that you setup a blog on either one of Stardock's blog sites www.joeuser.com or http://www.impulsedriven.net. If you're interested I can explain how to go about it.

But usually like I said if you post a thread, perhaps it's a duplicate or perhaps the question was stupid, you can always change the title of the thread to Please Delete and although in most cases the thread won't actually be deleted it will be clear that the thread was a mistake and people will simply not respond to it and it will slide off into obscurity in a day or two anyway.

Generally the mods won't delete any reply unless it's really offensive and that's likely to get you banned. Even when they feel the need to lock a thread they don't delete the replies that caused it in the first place.

Again if you created the thread in the first place and you have created a blog on one of Stardocks sites you can in fact delete your own or someone elses replies from your threads but if it's not your thread to begin with there's really nothing you can do.

The best thing to do is to think twice and make sure you really want to make that reply before you hit "Post Reply" because otherwise whatever you say is pretty much permanently viewable.

There are some issue's having to do with startup given that you wrote the article prior to creating the blog. In the future now that you've created your blog first you shouldn't have any problem. You still should be able to do anything you want to do however this first time may be a bit difficult.

So when you go to your blog, http://aaa.joeuser.com/, you'll see a header titled "aaa11's Articles". Currently there's nothing under there because like I said any threads you've created were created prior to your creating a blog, however in the future threads and or articles that you create should be visible and accessible right on your blog homepage at least as long as the forum in which the thread/article is placed ia accessible on the Joe User site.

The thing is that not all sites have direct access to all forums but even if that is the case you do have indirect access to all threads/articles no matter in what forum they are located.

So the first case is the easiest assuming that the thread/article is visible from the top level of your blog. If it is just click on it and it will open up in "blog mode". Here's a screenshot showing the top section of a thread/article in "blog mode" that I wrote.

I've circled in red the things you can do here. The Quote function doesn't really work and all the Comment function does is to add a reply. The edit function merely allows you to edit the OP just like you could edit the OP in regular forum mode however this edit also gives you access to another menu that allows you to move the thread from one forum to another, to make the thread private (in other words invisible to everyone but yourself), and to lock (or unlock) the thread so that people cannot (or can) comment. The Lock and the Make Private commands work the same as those describe under the Edit menu however going through the Edit menu is the only way you can move a thread/article.

OK so let's take a look at a few replies in "blog mode" in the following screenshot.

Again I've circled in red a number of options. Note that in threads/articles that you've authored you can delete individual replies that you or *anyone else* has made. Also you can Edit your own replies just as in regular forum mode. However you can also blacklist individuals including yourself (although I've never tried blacklisting myself, I wouldn't recommend it). If you blacklist someone then they will not be able to reply to any of the threads/articles that you author.

Now consider your case where there are no articles listed on your homepage because you just created it. There are still a couple of things you can do. For one thing you can goto to "My Dashboard" and from there select "Articles". This may list the article you wrote that you wish to modify or perhaps it may not. If it does then it provides you with another set of options as shown in the following screenshot.

Again I've circled in red the options that you have. "View" in this case gets you to the thread so that you can do the same things I described above. "Edit" again brings you to the edit of the OP and has the same options as I described above. But here you can also simply "Delete" the entire thread. Be careful once deleted it cannot be undone. Sometimes you might want to consider using the "Make Private" fucntion to simply make the thread invisible which does allow it to be undone if you so desire and to all intents and purposes the thread is the same as deleted. The "Referral" function gives you links to entities that have linked to your thread (usually google but it also counts peole that have links to your thread within the Stardock system as well.

The final case is if your thread does not appear either at the top level of your blog or in the Articles list under your Dashboard. In that case the best idea is to view the thread from whatever site you created it on. Take the following example which is the same thread that I referenced above however instead of accessing it in "blog mode" I access in what I would consider normal "forum mode".

Again here's a screen shot in this case from the Galciv2 site.

In this case what's important is the url and in particular is the thread/article number which in the above case is 390090.

So the way Stardocks sites work is that each site can directly view only a limited number of forums and subforums. However all threads/articles no matter what forum they are in and no matter what site that forum may be visible or not visible from, shares the same thread/article database. The key to accessing any thread/article on any site is to use the article number. In the case of any of Stardocks 12 forum sites the url of the thread/forum will be of the above form. For example instead of the Galciv2 site I could just as easily accessed it from the Elemental site using https://forums.elementalgame.com/390090.

Stardock actually has two blog sites, Joe User https://forums.joeuser.com and http://forums.impulsedriven.com/, and your blog is accessible from both using the following url's, http://aaa.joeuser.com/ and http://aaa.impulsedriven.net/. Note the change to .net when using Impulsedriven to access your blog. All of the above descriptions apply to Joe User directly however you can do pretty much the same things in pretty much the same way on Impulsedriven. The only need for using both is that each site gives you access to a different set of forums and subforums which may be useful if you're trying to move a thread/article from one forum to another otherwise they're pretty much the same.

Anyway the final case if you can't access your thread in any of the above described methods you can always access it directly as long as you know the thread/article number. In the case of the above thread/article the following two links apply http://mumblefratz.joeuser.com/article/390090 and http://mumblefratz.impulsedriven.net/article/390090. Note the addition of the /article/ to the path.

The only issue is that in this case you cannot get to the "delete" function and so if you want to delete the thread/article and you had to use this method to access it then your only choice is to "make private" which ultimately does pretty much the same thing.

So that's it. You now know pretty much everything about Stardock's interlocked forum and blog sites and how to negotiate among them and do pretty much everything.

I know it can seem like a lot of information all at once but inreality it's not really all that hard and it does allow you pretty much complete control over threads you author. Good luck and if you have any problems just let me know and I'll see if I can help you out.

Actually the distinction between blog and forum functionality is something that comes up fairly often. The key thing to realize is that all of Stardocks sites share a common database even though many of the forums on each site are totally unique, and that writing an "article" on a blog is really no different from being the Original Poster of a thread in a forum. The blog functionality just gives you a level of moderation over your articles/threads that you don't get in the standard forum format.

This is useful information and having explained it in detail once I can link to it in the future when others ask similar questions.

One final thing is to be a little careful to make sure you don't overstep your bounds. For example you can lock a thread you make and that is perfectly fine to do, however you can also unlock a thread as well and if you locked a thread and later changed your mind and wanted to unlock it, that would be perfectly fine. However it wouldn't be a good idea to unlock a thread that a moderator had locked for some cause or other. That could easily get you banned. But other than that you're pretty free to do whatever you want.