What does it mean when my topic turns red and I can't access it?

[chevenga]

Ban notices are auto-locked when created by the system.

 

Erm... I'm not sure I follow. Do you mean that it's different if the topic is manually locked?

 

To check this, I went to the Skyrim Technical Support forum and searched for "banned", because that's the quickest way I can think of to find topics that have been locked by a moderator.

 

I selected "Trouble editing the "Data File"" in the search results. It was locked by bben46. Then I went to the topic author's profile and clicked the "Posts" link in the left pane.

 

That topic doesn't appear red.

 

I get the same results if I use the "Find content" link on the profile page and then click "Posts only" in the left pane: the topics aren't red.

 

I also get the same results if I use the same procedure on other locked topics.

 

This makes me think that a topic being locked isn't the only criterion for a topic to appear red.

 

Other ideas?

 

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Edit: I just came across a red topic we can use for reference:

 

http://i986.photobucket.com/albums/ae349/chevenga/Nexus/RedTopic1.png

 

If I click on the "response to post" link, it dead-ends back at the first post in the topic. For my user-level permissions, post 16454013 does not exist.

 

Maybe this post is part of a thread that was deleted or hidden, or whose original post was deleted or hidden. This post itself wasn't deleted or hidden, but the post it's attached to isn't available anymore, and the red indicates that it's some kind of orphan.