20k users can vote to delete negatively voted accepted answers

Question

20k users can vote to delete answers with a score of -1 or lower (at any time, I believe), but the voting lacks a check to see if the answer is an accepted answer. IIRC, accepted answers have to be unaccepted before being deleted, even by mods, so such a delete vote should be disallowed completely.

As a test a while ago, I voted to delete this answer, and just now also voted on this one... for fun, I guess.

Since the first one was Jeff's post, I commented on it, but that didn't draw much attention, so I'm posting this. Of course this isn't a huge bug, but it should be fixed eventually.

_{(Admittedly, I'm very curious to see if 3 delete votes would actually delete the answer and break things horribly. I suspect at least the former would happen.)}

Answer 1

As Michael mentioned, moderators are not restricted from deleting accepted answers... And neither are 20K users. The restriction applies only to the author of the answer itself. A debatable restriction that has nevertheless probably prevented some amount of abuse over the years.

(Posting this answer to replace an inaccurate one from five years prior)