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I can't delete more than 5 of my own posts in a single day. Is this a bug, or intended behavior? I'm trying to clean up old, crappy posts of mine.

let me delete

Similar-looking problem, but it claims to be : https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/81434/

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1 Answer 1

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This is an abuse-prevention mechanism used to stop users from maliciously destroying a lot of their content in a short period of time and denying users access to it. It's intended behavior. Perhaps a bit over-eager in that department, but it's probably wiser to err on the side of caution for that.

There are some exceptions to this limit - see the section Deleting in the answer to The Complete Rate-Limiting Guide.

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  • Can/should I flag the rest of the answers I want to delete, or do I just have to keep at this for (# answers to delete)/5 days?
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Mar 31, 2011 at 20:34
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    Well, Matt, first I believe you're delete-blocked for the next week ♪ But past that, yes, it would probably be wiser to take a slower pace. You could flag for assistance, but if you have a huge backlog of things to be deleted, then it's probably a lot of ancient stuff that isn't going to be looked at any time soon, so there's no real need to rush.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Mar 31, 2011 at 20:36
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    Delete blocked for the next week? *!@#$*%^&
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Mar 31, 2011 at 20:55
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    @MattBall Why must you delete so much stuff? I think I have something like 8 deleted posts on all of SEI.
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 21:03
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    @drachenstern: because a lot of my old answers are absolute rubbish.
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 21:29
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    @MattBall and so while you recognize that you didn't know enough back then to be useful, now the answer is to remove them instead of making them better? :\ I don't think that's the right approach ...
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 21:42
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    @drach: okay, take this answer as an example. I was just starting out with ASP.NET, had no idea what I was talking about, and I still don't. The OP's problem is long since solved, and my answer is nothing but dead weight.
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 21:50
  • @MattBall Well if you didn't know then and still don't ... I suppose that's acceptable eh?
    – jcolebrand
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 21:53
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    @drach: good, now I can delete that one, too :)
    – Matt Ball
    Commented Apr 14, 2011 at 22:05
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    @Blocked for the week after 5 deletes? Seriously? That's just going way to far. Commented Mar 20, 2012 at 14:04
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    Too far indeed. I got blocked just after deleting 5 useless posts. This is smelling like a tyranny to me.
    – samayo
    Commented Oct 16, 2013 at 20:13
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    Yeah, I'm going to dig this one up again as well. Maybe allow us to delete posts with 0 upvotes? This should indicate that it's not a helpful answer and thus the loss isn't great. I, too, have a bunch of answers that are of poor quality. Commented Oct 28, 2013 at 17:30
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    I'll see about what we can do about possibly lightening the load without harming its intent.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Oct 28, 2013 at 17:42

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