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There was a question by Jon (no, another Jon) that had an incorrect accepted answer with 0 votes.

I pointed out in the comments that the accepted answer is wrong and started writing my own answer (a workaround, but anyway!).

As I finished my answer and pressed Post Your Answer, I realized the question has just been deleted.
This kind of bugs me because I really wanted to share my solution.

Should I:

  • repost the question;
  • wait for someone to revert it if possible?

Update

I reposted the question (along with my answer) here.

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  • I reposted the question.
    – Dan
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:29
  • A question that is deleted can always be undeleted, so there should be no need to repost.
    – slhck
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:34
  • @slhck: what if the owner deletes it again? I'll wait for mod response then..
    – Dan
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:37
  • I'll buzz OP to let him know about this thread
    – user1228
    Aug 2, 2011 at 16:41
  • @Won't I deleted the question because it didn't have any suitable answers (as you noticed). I'm not sure why I marked it as answered, probably to keep my answer acceptance % high (went through all my questions without marked answers and marked as answered). You should have just posted your answer to the question to begin with and then I would have marked that new answer as correct.
    – Jon Erickson
    Aug 2, 2011 at 18:13
  • @Dan If the post has been undeleted by others, the owner can't unilaterally delete it anymore.
    – user259867
    Nov 9, 2014 at 4:56

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Interesting. I don't know why the OP deleted his (rather old) question, but I support reposting the same content. The original asker has the right to delete his question, for any number of reasons. When the question is deleted, it's gone, and it's reasonable to assume that it's not coming back.

You might ping the OP to ask him why he deleted his question, but there's no good way for a non-mod to do that now. I dislike commenting on completely unrelated posts just to get someone's attention.

Look at it this way. A user might come by tomorrow and ask the same question. Is it right to call that new question a dupe, just because a deleted question asks the same thing?

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  • "When the question is deleted, it's gone" seems really misleading. It's not gone at all, and if enough people vote to undelete it'll go back to being visible to everyone again
    – Michael Mrozek
    Aug 2, 2011 at 17:58
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    @Michael: That's true, and a good point, but I was speaking from the perspective of a user arriving at SO, searching for content present in the deleted question, and finding nothing.
    – Michael Petrotta
    Aug 2, 2011 at 18:03
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Can a question be restored if the owner deletes it?

10k users and moderators can vote to undelete a question; as usual, the vote from a moderator is a binding vote.

As far as I can see, a question deleted from the owner has never been undeleted. The question could have been deleted for many reasons, including:

  • the OP realized he asked a silly question
  • after the OP discovered the solution for his question, he thought the question could not be of any help for other users
  • the OP didn't receive any answer, or the only answer is wrong, and decided to delete it because he thought nobody would answer the question

If users keep deleting their own questions, then something is wrong; probably they are not asking the right question, or the question is too vague to get a precise answer, or an answer at all.
As far as I know there is a limit to the number of questions users can delete, but if a user have 5 questions out of 11 deleted, there would be a problem; probably the user didn't understand how to use an SE site.

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  • I thought that maybe he'd deleted the question to get an even better approval rate. Maybe he only marked the (wrong) answer correct a while ago to get 100% rating and after I pointed out it's actually wrong, decided to delete the question altogether. But this is pure speculation.
    – Dan
    Aug 2, 2011 at 17:51
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    @Dan Abramov It could be. It could also be the OP marked the answer as accepted to avoid the question would appear between the unanswered questions, and somebody else would waste time reading it; once you pointed out the answer was wrong, he deleted the question for the same reason. It's not possible to know the exact reason, if not asking to the user (if the user doesn't lie ;-)).
    – apaderno
    Aug 2, 2011 at 18:06

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