I've looked all over for it and can't find it anywhere.
It is Bagpuss' nasty p.m thread. Not a happy one, I admit but a bit odd for it to disappear without trace or comment, as far as I can see.
If Bagpuss has asked for it to be removed, fine - but I'm not sure it quite works that way.

Anyone any idea where it went, and why?

I think it probably got removed by the MODS. I don't know why it got removed, but I think possibly a minor disagreement was beginning towards the end of where I read up to, so that could be why I guess.

Lucid

Oh dear.

Looks like you are only safe from being catpeed if you talk about counting fruit gums or call an election.

Budge up, MadTom - I think I need a lift!

it's normal for the moderators to delete threads with no notice (except, presumably, to the thread starter - i haven't had one of my own deleted, so i'm not sure). personally i'd rather have some kind of notice - all this sweeping under the carpet doesn't really foster an open atmosphere.

This thread may well go the same way as we seem to be discouraged from discussing the forums themselves. I can understand this from the AB's point of view because some things can give an impression of
a lack of professionalism they may wish not to advertise.

However, I do think it would be courteous if when a thread is removed we are told that it has gone and perhaps why. The "why" could be expressed in fairly neutral terms without naming names.

The reason I think this would be more courteous than just removing is because sometimes the threads that go have information on them that could be useful outside whatever dispute is going on. I searched for Bagpuss's thread because I wanted to contact a poster there about something else and before I did so I wanted to re-read his post. But it was gone. Not very helpful. Of course the result would have been the same even if I had found a notification - but I would have felt less aggrieved.

Just now I was unable to find a certain thread despite searching for every keyword I could remember - then I typed a couple of phrases into Google and found it instantly. The strange thing is that many of the keywords I searched on brought up threads that haven't seen any activity since 2004, yet the thread I was looking for was updated as recently as last month.

I just googled the thread in question and it does appear at the top of the search results. It does say that it has been moved or deleted when I tried to access it, so mods must have removed it.