G'day Rolf,

The first part of your message explains the [no such node, ID 11139417]. Thanks for that.

"Someone purged the whole node, such that the title can't be resolved anymore."

Can the purge process, whether automated or manual, include a first step of sending a message that indicates that purging will occur. That would provide an explanation of why the message changed from "node title" to "no such node, ID node-id" and the subsequent disappearance of the reply. What the monk actually sees (message modification or reply disappearance) will obviously change depending on the time the message and/or thread is accessed.

To give an idea of what I believe the series of steps were in my case (all relative to my timezone):

1. I wrote my reply, "Re: Perl Multi Processing.", early in the morning.
2. Probably not long after that, I logged off and started $work.
3. At some point during the day, the AM response was posted. Had I been logged on around that time, I no doubt would have seen a "Re^2: Perl Multi Processing" title in the message; and the actual reply in the thread.
4. Later during the day, the AM response was purged.
5. After $work, I logged back in and saw the message with the title "no such node, ID 11139417"; and, of course, no reply to my post.

I thought that some error may have occurred, e.g. a DB issue, and reported the (apparent) problem. If I see something similar again, I might guess this is a purging issue and just move on; however, that could mean a real error goes unreported — how would I tell the difference? In the future, others might experience exactly the same thing.

Finally, just to be clear, I do not have a problem with purging posts from known trolls. I do have a problem with no general notification that purging was something that was to be introduced; and also that I received no specific notification that a reply to me had been purged.