Are deleted answers automatically removed, or is that done by a user with access to moderation tools?

Question

I noticed that in some Q&A sites, deleted answers appear for more time than in other Q&A sites.
Is that because the answers are manually removed, or because a setting that is different from site to site?

For example, in Is it normal to separate hyphenated words on different lines?, I can still see my answer (Is it normal to separate hyphenated words on different lines?), which appears with a different background color. I see the links link, edit, undelete, and flag; under those links I read deleted by owner 9 hours ago. There is just a comment that is mine.

For how long will I be able to undelete the answer I deleted?

Answer 1

Deleted answers appear to the owner and to 10K and diamond mods. There is no noticeable time-delay: it happens immediately.

Deleted answers (and questions, if you're in the mood) will appear with a pinkish gray background.

Other users will not see the deleted answer in the stream of others.

For how long will I be able to undelete the answer I deleted?

Forever. Posts can generally only be soft-deleted.

Answer 2

There are 3 ways an answer can be deleted:

1. The post owner manually deletes it.
2. A diamond moderator manually deletes it.
3. The answer is deleted as part of a question deletion, which can be done by the question owner (subject to a set of criteria that determines overall question value), diamond moderators, and 3 (or more, subject to question value criteria) 10k users after the question has been closed for 2 days.

There are also 3 ways an answer can be undeleted:

1. The post owner manually undeletes it.
2. A diamond moderator manually undeletes it.
3. The answer is undeleted as part of a question undeletion, which can be done by the question owner (under certain conditions? I'm not sure), diamond moderators, and 3 or more 10k users (subject to the criteria above) with no time limit since the question was deleted.

This all assumes that the answer isn't locked, in which case only a diamond moderator can delete or undelete (I believe they must release the lock first, though).

There are no time limits on when you can delete or undelete your own posts, and delete/undelete votes do not expire like close votes do. AFAIK, deleted content sticks around forever, unless there's been a policy change I'm not aware of. (Or, one of the devs has been mucking in the database, but that's exceedingly rare.)