What should I do if I find the answer to an old question of mine that was automatically deleted as abandoned?

Question

I originally asked the question Implementing PPPoE half-bridge/ip-passthrough to suit IPSec VPN firewall appliance with Linux a little more than a year ago, which no one was able to answer. The question was eventually automatically deleted by the Community user after a year as an abandoned question.

I have found a much belated solution to this (which I imagine would be quite helpful to anyone else in this situation, as I couldn't find any help on this topic by searching). I'd like to leave the answer for anyone else who might need it.

What should I do in this case? Should I try and get a moderator to undelete the old question, or should I repost the old question and put my self-answer there?

(For posterity, the edited and answered question is here: Implementing PPPoE half-bridge/ip-passthrough to suit IPSec VPN firewall appliance with Linux)

Answer 1

It's better to pursue undeletion (with edits). Deletions are designed to be reversible. There's an "undelete" link right there, which implies that it's meant to be used when the problems that led to deletion have been addressed. Sticking to the original question instead of starting a new one also keeps all the history together; I've sometimes seen people ask nearly the same question several times (deleting and then re-asking), and it's confusing when I think I remember something in the edit history or a request for clarification in a comment and there's no sign of it now.

Notice that I talked about fixing the problems that led to the deletion. If your question was deleted as abandoned, then not only was it unanswered but it also wasn't upvoted. Maybe that's because it's a super-obscure topic and few people even read it -- or maybe it means there is room for improvement in the question. The best course of action, then, is to edit to improve it and then request undeletion from users with the undelete privilege. On the sites I frequent, this is usually done via a request on meta.

When it is undeleted, you can post and accept your answer and that will prevent it from being automatically deleted again. But with luck, you've improved the question and written a good answer and the resulting upvotes would prevent automatic deletion anyway.

Answer 2

Monica's advice on fixing the question is solid - anything you can do to correct whatever caused it to not get the necessary attention the first time around is worth doing.

In particular, take this opportunity to add what you've learned in the time since you first asked.

But then... Just re-ask the question. Sure you can vote to undelete it, or flag it for moderator attention, or bring it up on meta... But all of that requires a lot more time and effort - yours and others' - to accomplish the same thing that re-asking it would.

And re-asking means everything starts fresh. You don't have to familiarize yourself with the myriad rules for automatic deletion that might kick in again, or drag along the increasingly-irrelevant history of the question as it existed prior to its deletion.

The one exception I'd make is if someone posted a great answer to the question prior to it being deleted, and neither you nor anyone else noticed it. That's very rare, but if it happens then you definitely should flag for moderator attention and ask for undeletion.

Answer 3

I see nothing wrong with both options.

I'd suggest as follows. If the question is a complicated one, and it's going to take too much work to write it up, or you know that you're not going to do as good of a job as you did when you first wrote it, in that case the best option would be to post a question in meta of your site and ask users with 10k or moderators to undelete the question.

If however, it's not so hard to write it up again, you could just post a new question and then self answer it, as it's not going to be make as duplicate of a deleted question.