Should we permit undeleting questions against the author’s will?

Question

I just wrote this comment to my own question

Just for the record, I attempted to delete this question twice and a group of fascist elitists punks have resurrected it in a fashion totally adverse to its author's desire.. Obviously, this question will just get downvoted at meta.stackoverflow.com, and that is never my intention. Proof is in the pudding, the flock will downvote and close or delete legitimately good questions, and reopen with force questions that I acknowledge have no chance of positive-exp.

I thought it was good enough to start a topic of its own.

Answer 1

When a question is posted, some ownership of that question is conferred to the community at large. Were this not so, the OP would have complete control over the question, and there would be no possibility of closing or deleting questions, or editing of the question by other participants to improve it.

Similarly, the community at large occasionally believes that a question has sufficient merit to be restored after it has been deleted. This concept is baked into the system; after a question (or its answers) gets a certain amount of upvotes, it cannot be deleted by the OP at all.

To serve as a safety valve, a degree of community consensus is required to restore a question (three undelete votes).

Answer 2

Addressing the important question here, "Should we permit adversely reopening questions against the author’s will?", in short: yes. Mechanically, undeleting (because this is about deletion, not re-opening) a question is identical to deleting a question in terms of access and who should be allowed it. So since we do permit the deletion of questions against the author's will, then it mechanically makes sense to permit undeleting questions. After all, both are just a matter of folk with big, beefy rep disagreeing with the author on whether a question contributes value and deserves to stay on the site or not, just in different directions. Just like the author can have a beef with beefreps deleting their question, the beefreps can have a beef with the author deleting the question. Those with less beef in their rep are fully permitted to argue against unapproved undeletion, make a case why it should be left deleted and maybe it will stay that way. But in the end, it's quite valid and permissible to undelete questions against the author's will.

_{Also, let them keep wearing the frocks, metaphorical or otherwise.}

Answer 3

I was one of the people that voted to undelete.

Why? Because I thought that deep beneath your drivel, there was a worthy question, but thanks for bringing this up, as now I found that it was a duplicate.

As for your titles,

_{(source: wikimedia.org)}

Answer 4

This is a very valid concern. When users asks questions, they may not realize that the information is irrevocably stuck posted. If a user asks a foolish question, or a question that (accidentally) contains proprietary (breach of NDA) information, it is permanently attached to their user profile. The user discovers their mistake and deletes the question. Someone else (three people), not knowing why it was deleted are able to undo the deletion, and re publicize the information that the first user wanted off the site. This is problematic.

In the case of content which you want removed, editing still leaves it in edit history. Or, there is no way to edit the question that doesn't make you look stupid. Yes, the user is still at fault for asking the question, but we are talking about their means of recourse. They can edit or delete, both of which leave traces which can be undone against their will.

If a user wants their own question gone, they should be able to remove it. Yes, it will still end up available to the 10k users (of whom there are more and more) but the fact still stands that for whatever reason, the user does not want the information in the question on the internet anymore.

Summary: Self-deleted items should not be undeletable by 10k users.

Moderators and site-admins, as always, would still have the power to do so.

EDIT: Based on comments that have come up. I am suggesting that posts deleted by OPs can only be undeleted by OPs, moderators and admins. Questions deleted by the community can only be undeleted by the community, moderators and admins.

Answer 5

I wanted to mark his old answer as accepted, but he changed it. So I'm going to repost it here and accept it. This is from devinb, you can find his profile here Maybe some day StackOverflow will permit us to accept prior revisions. I've redacted the parts that are nonsense.

answered 12 hours ago devinb 8,5392735

Remarkably, I actually agree with Evan, although, as always, his aggressive attitude clouds the actual merit of anything he says.

This is a valid concern. If a user asks a question, and then they realize that it is terrible, or for whatever reason, they want it deleted. (perhaps they accidentally posted information which is private, or professionally detrimental, or just a case of brain freeze). There is currently no way for them to actually delete it. They can "soft delete", which means that everyone over 10k can still see it, AND it can still be reopened. This is problematic.

In the case of content which you want removed, editing still leaves it in edit history. And even still, perhaps the question itself concerns intellectual property, or algorithms which are not supposed to be publicized. Yes, the user is at fault for asking the question, but we are talking about their means of recourse.

If a user wants their own question gone, they should be able to remove it. Permanently. Yes, it will still end up available to the 10k users (of whom there are more and more) but the fact still stands that for whatever reason, the user does not want the information in the question on the internet anymore.

Summary: Self-deleted items should not be undeletable by 10k users.

Moderators and site-admins, as always, would still have the power to do so.