I thought so too and replied to a couple after using Firebug to get the URLs.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tropical/msg0713012430785.html?1
and
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tropical/msg0707175723893.html?1

Heres the link to the last one:
http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/load/tropical/msg0714354122608.html

My guess was that they were posted by a user whose account got deleted for SPAM and/or the the posts were somehow incorrectly deleted?

Interesting, you're handy! I've never seen this before. Spam usually disappears completely, as well as any other posts deleted by moderator. This is only happening on this forum, of the 25 or so that I visit.

I don't read that many forums but hadn't seen it before either.

I just sent gardenweb a message with a link to this thread. I'm hoping that not only will they remove the "orphaned?" threads but... satisfy our curiosity as to how it happened. :)

That should take care of it. I don't flatter myself that I'd even understand such explanation, but you might. I gave up on web page coding over a decade ago. No doubt whatever's going on involves something much more cutting edge than HTML, javascript, and .css. Have fun with it!

Gardenweb's response:
" It looks like the server glitched when we removed a couple of spam posts. The layout has been restored, but if you see any other issues, please let us know."

Myself, I know very very little HTML, CSS, PHP and MySQL. Usually just enough to know that something is doable, and probably already has been, so... I "search", modify, reuse, etc.

Good day/night.

Good stuff, thanks! Well done.