To give an example of what I meant above: There was a thread in GM about a month ago about some aspect of Maria's alleged doping case, where the OP asked a legitimate question on procedural issues of the case (I forget exactly which). A number of people responded in a civilized manner, offering opinions and/or facts relevant to this question. As the thread progressed, it became increasingly likely that the OP wasn't actually interested in his question, but had used it to bash and/or incite others to bash Maria. Suddenly, the thread was deleted.
This caused several posts that had legitimate information and did not violate forum etiquette to disappear as well. Those posts could be useful to others who legitimately had the same question. I think it would have been better to remove the bashing posts only and possibly issue warnings instead.