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If a question has an accepted answer and the question is deleted, what happens to the accepted answer and with the reputation coming from accepting that answer?

More specifically:

  1. Is the accept sign automatically removed when a question is deleted?
  2. It is known that reputation for answers with score at least 3 and visible for at least 60 days is kept after the deletion. Does this include the +15 reputation point for accepted answer, or are these 15 reputation points removed on deletion regardless of the age of the answer (even if the score is ⩾ 3)?

This came up in a discussion in chat (moved from comments on a per-site-meta). Since it was not that easy to find examples of such posts, asking here seemed a better solution than experimenting by looking for posts, deleting and undeleting them, checking reputation, etc.

I found this related question: Accepted answers to deleted questions don't have a checkmark. However, no definitive answer was posted there, only a few comments.

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1 Answer 1

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  1. Is the accept sign automatically removed when a question is deleted?

As @quid notes in the comments, new deletions do remove the accept sign. It used to be different before 2012, when interestingly, the deletion causes the accepted answer to not show up at the top anymore.

  1. Does this include the +15 reputation point for accepted answer, or are these 15 reputation points removed on deletion regardless of the age of the answer?

The +15 points don't influence the +3 score needed (score and acceptance are two independent things). You'll keep the reputation from being the accepted answer if and only if you keep the reputation from the upvotes.

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  • Sorry if my post was unclear. I meant in the second part: If an answer fulfills the conditions for keeping the reputation (i.e., score at least 3 and visible for 60 days), will only the reputation from the upvotes be kept, or does the user keep also +15?
    – Martin
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 6:50
  • BTW is there some trick how regular users could find deleted posts with accepted answer, or were you able to find such posts only using moderator superpowers?
    – Martin
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 6:52
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    Yep, that's a moderator ability: searching for deleted:1 isaccepted:1. I'll see if I can find some examples from my own past on Stack Overflow and show some reputation changes to prove the second part.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 6:56
  • I couldn't find any, but the question you linked to shows at least that the reputation is kept for a high-scoring answer.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 7:08
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    @Martin If an answer qualifies for reputation retention on the basis of score and non-deleted age, all reputation changes as a result of that answer are kept, regardless of where they originated from (votes, accepts, bounties, etc.)
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Commented May 15, 2019 at 7:41
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    Re 1. That's false. It is removed (since October 2012 I think). Old instances were kept though it seems. Undeletion restores it though. If somebody tests and to avoid confusion : after the delete, refresh the page (the check is still shown otherwise)
    – quid
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 17:20
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    @quid I should've noticed that the answers in my search results were all 8 years old ... thanks for the clarification.
    – Glorfindel Mod
    Commented May 16, 2019 at 20:40
  • I will add that this was discussed a bit in this chatroom.
    – Martin
    Commented May 17, 2019 at 5:38

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