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If you've posted an answer to a question which later gets migrated, the following text appears below your answer:

enter image description here

The FAQ link points to the deletion section which reads:

Why are some questions or answers removed?

Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators.

Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. For additional guidance, see How to Ask.

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are …

  • commentary on the question or other answers
  • asking another, different question
  • “thanks!” or “me too!” responses
  • exact duplicates of other answers
  • not even a partial answer to the actual question

If you wish to improve an existing answer, click edit. For additional guidance, see How to Answer.

which doesn't answer the question "Why was your post deleted?" in the case of a migration. The tone of this FAQ section implies that the user has done something bad, which they haven't - Answering dupes is frowned upon, but answering questions pending migration is not.

I propose that we change this text to "The question was migrated, your answer is now located [here](link to new answer)." This would also fix this problem, which prompted this post.

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  • Answers are automatically deleted sometimes during migration.
    – Engineer2021
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:26
  • @0A0D - Right, I'm aware of this, but I'm a community mod. The message is for the people who don't know this, and it doesn't help them.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:29
  • Aren't links on migrated questions automatically forwarded to the target site? There's no deletion problem there.
    – user102937
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:30
  • @RobertHarvey - Yes, unless you append ?noredirect=1 to the question URL (as in the 10k tools) or link directly to the answer (as in the users's profile).
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:34
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    Seems like the migration would be fairly obvious in those cases.
    – user102937
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:38
  • 3
    Regular users don't see deleted posts in their profiles so won't see the ?noredirect=1 link via that route.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:40
  • @RobertHarvey - True, but I imagine the use case for this message to be something like: (1) user reviews their previous answers, notes that one was deleted. (2) user clicks answer link, finds that answer was deleted. (3) user reads " Why was your post deleted? See the faq. (4) user reads FAQ deletion section. The intended result is that the user understands the cause for deletion. In this case, the result is that the user is confused.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:43
  • @ChrisF - Aha! Now I understand: This message is for the 10ks and mods who read the answers to deleted questions, and doesn't need to make sense. The priority just dropped several orders of magnitude.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:45
  • 1
    @KevinVermeer "Why was your post deleted?" line in an answer only shows up for the author of that answer. It's not shown for moderators or other users. They will just see the usual "deleted by X" line.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:50
  • @AnnaLear - Oh. Another complication that I was unaware of. I guess I need to create a sock so I can pretend to be a normal user sometimes and understand this stuff.
    – Kevin Vermeer
    Commented Sep 21, 2011 at 16:53

1 Answer 1

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I don't think this is a big deal. Migrations are typically pretty prominent.

There are several scenarios to consider here and I'll try to cover them coherently and roughly in order.

When a question is migrated, its answers are deleted from the source site and their authors are notified by a header message. This was originally done for the question owner only, but it now happens in most cases for answers as well.

For regular users, the question will now automatically redirect to the new site, so unless a user manually appends noredirect=1 or follows the link back from the question's new location, they will not see the version with all the deleted answers.

Answers that are converted to comments will show "your answer was converted to a comment" to the author.

"Why was this answer deleted" is a helpful message when the question is still in place on the original site, but the answer required moderation for some reason. In that case, the best way to handle explaining the deletion is for a moderator to leave a comment if possible. Still, "why was this answer deleted" is shown only to the answer's author. The only other people who can see deleted answers on a page are 10k users and moderators and both those groups should hopefully be aware of possible reasons for a deletion.

In addition to all that, users do not see deleted questions or answers in their profiles. They would have to check the questions directly which would either redirect them to the new location if the question was migrated or show the existing help, which covers other scenarios.

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