Etiquette for deleting a question with an elaborate answer

Question

This seems like it should be mentioned somewhere, but I tried to find something about it, and came up blank.

Today, I posted a fairly lengthy answer to a question, with examples, etc. In other words, I spent a bit of time on it. But later, I checked back and saw no evidence of my answer, and found out that the original question was removed by the author with no explanation.

I felt bad about losing all that work I put into the answer, and I didn't even have a copy of it myself in case it's either asked in another area or some other forum.

Is this a common occurence, or was it perhaps some sort of bad timing for me? I like to help people out, but sometimes it seems like a lot of work, and in this case, was totally wasted.

Answer 1

It was bad timing, in that the asker wouldn't have been able to do this if your answer had had an upvote.

It's impossible to know why the asker chose to delete his question; a few reasons come to mind:

• He realized his question was based on a flawed assumption, and decided to rescind it. Your answer didn't help him because what he asked wasn't what he meant to ask. The question may still be useful to future visitors, though.

• He is new and thought he should delete his question now that he's obtained an answer. He shouldn't have done that, and the question should be restored.

• He is ashamed of his question or has revealed too much about confidential matters. If this is a serious issue, the question can be anonymized or the confidential information can be removed, and then the question can be restored.

Undeleting takes 3 votes from users with 10k reputation or a moderator. Do you still have the link to the question? If you do, anyone with 10k reputation (e.g. me, if it's on Stack Overflow) can give you the contents. If you don't, only a moderator can find the link.

Answer 2

I mostly (but sometimes forget to) keep a copy of both the question and my answer on my local drive.

That way it can actually be a jackpot if the original poster deletes their question. – Because you can then re-post it along with your answer, and possibly start earning reputation on both the question and the answer. – Just make sure that you attribute the question to its original asker.

If you don't have saved copies, then do what Gilles suggests at the end of their answer:
ask nicely in the meta forum of your site someone to hand over the Q&A.
Anyone with 10k+ in reputation on the site should be able to do so.