Let me edit my own self-deleted question

Question

I asked a question, and then realised the premise of my question was wrong. I want to first delete it, then edit it, then undelete it. If I edit it while it is live, there is a risk of users wasting their time answering the wrong post. However, when I delete it, then try to edit it, a brief tooltip tells me:

You cannot edit your own deleted question. Undelete before editing.

According to the answers to this question, this system exists to avoid spammers asking a question, deleting it, editing it, then undeleting it a month later where it goes unnoticed (because undeleted is not bumped). I appreciate this, but I think there may be other alternatives, such as:

• a grace time during which deleted questions can be edited
• bumping old undeleted questions, or
• requiring some reputation to edit self-deleted questions.

Please let me edit my own deleted question. I have good reasons for this approach.

Answer 1

I also think that the current rule is not ideal and I have a simple suggestion that, in my opinion, will avoid all problems:

Allow users to edit and undelete self-deleted questions in one action.

This can be communicated in one of two ways (or both combined):

• Change the text of the Save edits button to Save edits and undelete. And/or...

• When the user clicks Save edits, display a warning message informing the user that the question will be undeleted. For example:

  You cannot edit your self-deleted question. If you save this edit, the question will be automatically undeleted. Continue?

Some might argue that it could be an inconvenience for the user if they have to work on a long edit just to realize, after the fact, that they can't save it. In that case, we could also have a warning displayed on the /edit view; similar to what is displayed when editing an old revision or the notice that is shown to users without full edit privileges.

^{I personally don't think that this last part is necessary because anyone editing their self-deleted question should be trying to improve it to then undelete it anyway. They might just realize that they have to do so in one single edit rather than in a few subsequent ones (if they were planning to do so).}

Answer 2

As Catija said, undeletion does not bump posts, so editing questions you have deleted while they are deleted is not permitted as it would (and did) allow spammers to add difficult to detect spam.

You've two choices here

1. Copy the deleted question into an editor, or begin asking another question and modify that till you're happy with it. You can then undelete the original question and immediately modify it.

2. Accept that the original question was wrong and simply ask a new one. As long as that's a rare or one-off occurrence, that's not going to be a problem. If you do it regularly, it's a sign you need to spend more time thinking about and composing your questions before submitting them.

If you need the original question's source you can navigate to the source link in the question's revision history.

Answer 3

This is a useful proposition. It can be solved by changing the Edit button to a Edit and undelete button on self-deleted posts. Therefore, edited posts will be auto-bumped for spam-protection. Then the button Save edits and undelete will be enabled after some changes have been made to the post, to protect against non-edited posts being bumped.