Well, one user whose name shall not be mentioned went insane in that thread and maybe staff felt it easier to just erase the entire deal.

@catbertthegreat: That was a glorious melt down!

I wonder if the person has a chemical imbalance, personality/anger issues, or it's simply a case of not getting out of his mom's basement enough.

Bless those folks for trying to coax him off the cliff. If I had been one of the park rangers, I would've just darted him and removed him to a different area of the park.

@itsvicdaslick: Thanks for asking the question (the post was mine), just discovered that it's gone. Was sorry to see the massive flame war that happened in the comments. However, in the past I thought the mods just deleted the offending comments and not the whole deal.

I was wondering if maybe the mods didn't feel it was a "deal" and was more of a PSA, since technically there was nothing "for sale" (although the same could technically be said for any "free" deal I suppose). However, it was clear from the attention and votes the the post got that people appreciated knowing about this new free service Google is offering, so it doesn't seem like deleting it is in the best interests of the community. But if the powers that be would prefer, in the future maybe "deals" like that should just get "announced" as "Ask the Community" questions? Though how that's more apropos, I'm not sure ...

@shrdlu: Okee doke, done. Just FYI, in case you didn't catch it while it was up: the "idiot comments" were kind of a fluke and didn't really have anything to do with the post itself, so hopefully they won't happen again.

http://deals.woot.com/deals/details/c65db153-d682-46c9-ba79-7b2c459db48c/google-code-university-free-online-computer-science-courses#0

Have a great weekend, everyone!

@thunderthighs: Hey there. Always nice to see you.

There are so many things that get posted that are deals to one person, but not necessarily to another. Sure, Stephen Colbert's desk being auctioned for charity on eBay wasn't a deal (not remotely), but I voted on it (right along with a zillion others). Online classes for free is certainly going to be a great deal for someone, especially in these terrible and uncertain times.

Besides, there were people who didn't believe that the (last of the) Leak Frog deals that @catbertthegreat posted were deals; just try and find a Leak Frog now. BTW, you can tell the crazy team that I still have one sitting by my Cisco router. Those frogs were a deal to me and I was grateful to see them.

As I implied above, one way to decide whether something should be allowed is to see how people respond to it. If they're voting it up, they're glad it's here, and if they're glad it's here, why remove it?

@shrdlu: Thank you! I thought it was a great deal yesterday too. Don't know who pulled it or why, but am happy that it's back! Nobody tattled on all the drama during the time I was working last night, and I did not see it.