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Note: This is a followup to a followup question (original here), so it is likely missing information on its own to provide the detail necessary. In the spirit of reducing duplication on the SE servers, please see the related questions if you have questions.

I realize this is a near match for this question, but given the recent improvements to the rep system on SE and my recent related though not exactly the same experience caused by the current shortcomings I'll ask about it again:

Now that users are notified immediately of any loss incurred by deleted/unupvoted/unaccepted answers, it leaves us trying to reconcile the reason for the discrepancies and most users with less than 10K rep (at least most SO users) will likely turn to MSO for resolution. Since you have to have at least 10K rep to view removed questions (and possibly answers) they will be unable to see whether the original question or their original answer is worthwhile to be considered for undeletion. They shouldn't care about unrelated questions or answers so the ability to only allow them to see their contribution and the question they contributed to (or just the question if they asked it themselves) should provide enough information to know whether they feel it should be brought to review.

I realize there are a lot of conditionals in that last statement and bear in mind that I have no idea how hard it would be to implement, but I know I would see benefit from it currently. That tells me that other users could benefit from it in the future as well.

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    I was pretty sure that you could always view your own deleted answers, regardless of your reputation level.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 4:37
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    Is what you want this?: The ability, with less than 10k rep, to see deleted questions on which you have a posted answer? The ability to see your questions/answers that you deleted yourself has always been there.
    – Ben Lee
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 5:47
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    Cody is correct, unless the parent question is deleted, you can already see your deleted answers - we even link to them in your reputation tab (again, if the parent isn't deleted). If you're 10k and could see it in either case, we also link.
    – Nick Craver Mod
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 10:20
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    @CodyGray - Re-read your initial comment - my mistake. The problem is the question is deleted (hence I cannot see it or my answer on it) so there is no way for me to know whether to bring the question to moderator attention for being removed when it has value. The people who answered a question which was deleted voluntarily by its asker have stake in having it reopened.
    – M.Babcock
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 12:49
  • @NickCraver - You found the missing piece to my question... in the case where I answer a question which is later voluntarily removed by its author (such as the one from my initial question), how could I know whether it warrants soliciting mods to reopen it?
    – M.Babcock
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 12:52
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    @M.Babcock - unfortunately you can't, show people deleted questions before having high rep has ended in quite a mess in the past, I don't think we'll repeat that anytime soon. Luckily, at your current rate, 10k isn't that far off.
    – Nick Craver Mod
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 13:55
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    @NickCraver - Fair enough. It just seems like it might cause a lot of static in the metas, but if its been tried and didn't work then my solution would likely be worse than the problem itself.
    – M.Babcock
    Commented Mar 16, 2012 at 14:05
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    @NickCraver why don't you put this as an answer? your tried-and-false reasoning makes perfect sense to me and likely to OP as well
    – gnat
    Commented Apr 26, 2012 at 12:58
  • This is a common sense request, why not add it?
    – Engineer2021
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 13:04
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    @NickCraver Could you please add an answer detailing that on the original question? Just so we have a valid counter argument and can let it come to rest one way or another?
    – user200500
    Commented Mar 27, 2013 at 5:27

2 Answers 2

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I think that we should always have access to content that we have authored. Our own deleted answers and our answers to deleted questions should be visible in our profile answers tab. Unfortunately this request has already been explicitly declined.

As it is, if we know the id of our post (question or answer), we should be able to use the edit trick to get at our content, as lunboks suggests in his answer to my similar question.

For example, as I do not have 10k reputation on Programmers, I get a Page Not Found error on this answer of mine, yet if I strip out the post id (92333 in this case) and insert it into a URL of the form

http://<site>/posts/<post id>/edit

then I can still edit it to get access to the content that I authored.

Similarly, I can't read this question on MSO, (with an id of 172089) but I can still suggest an edit to it.

Alternatively, Jeremy Banks suggests in a comment (since my question had already been closed) that there is a userscript which should let you view deleted questions and your answers to those questions.

See also How is the editing of deleted posts supposed to behave?

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  • 2
    The edit trick has been fixed a long while ago AFAIK.
    – Jeff Mercado
    Commented Apr 26, 2012 at 13:57
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    @JeffMercado - I have added an example of how the edit trick works, and just confirmed that it does still work.
    – Mark Booth
    Commented Mar 6, 2013 at 13:13
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    As an aside, your "edit it" gets me (not being the author, of course, and having little rep on Programmers) "This post is deleted and cannot be edited".
    – Arjan
    Commented Mar 16, 2013 at 8:07
  • Just thought that I'd say that this still works. Just to clarify, to get at your answer to a question that the author deleted, you need the answerPostID from the URL, not the questionPostID, where the URL is of the form: http://<site>/questions/questionPostID/<titleText>/<answerPostID>#<answerPostID>, and then plug it into Mark's URL above, i.e. http://<site>/posts/<answerPostID>/edit
    – Greenonline
    Commented Apr 22, 2016 at 9:26
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Authors of deleted answers have always been able to see them*. As of a few weeks ago, authors of deleted questions can now view them as well, regardless of reputation.

As of February 28th, 2017, authors of answers to deleted questions can also view them. Kudos to Konamiman and Nick Craver for making that work after many years of requests!

*well, not quite always, but for several years now.

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  • Well, I think Mark's hack doesn't work anymore: This post is deleted and cannot be edited.
    – Himanshu
    Commented May 9, 2013 at 5:29
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    You gotta have edit rights for it to work.
    – Shog9
    Commented May 9, 2013 at 6:06
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    "This is unlikely to change"... Has it changed? Should I be able to access a deleted question?
    – Zanna
    Commented Mar 22, 2017 at 4:35
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    Yup, @Zanna - I'll post an update shortly, forgot this was going in.
    – Shog9
    Commented Mar 22, 2017 at 4:42
  • Is it possible to view a list of our deleted answers?
    – Stevoisiak
    Commented May 28, 2017 at 3:17
  • @StevenVascellaro yes (kind of, only recently deleted answers), see this answer for steps and screenshots.
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Jul 2, 2017 at 14:01

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