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I deleted one of my questions and would like to undelete it. This requires finding the question.

I think you shouldn't be prevented from seeing your own posts that you have deleted. It should be easier than me remembering the link or checking the browser history to easily look these up.

I would currently need 10K to see my deleted items and even then if I can find their URL.

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  • 23
    A page showing my own deleted questions and answers would be useful. And I'd like it to show my answers to a deleted question too. It's very annoying if the OP deletes his question and my answer disappears with it.
    – CodesInChaos
    Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 13:53
  • Related: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41130/… and meta.stackexchange.com/questions/50237/…
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 20:04
  • 5
    Why has this not been implemented yet?
    – missingfaktor
    Commented Apr 21, 2012 at 10:43
  • 1
    If I had to guess, it's because it's tagged as [status-bydesign] I guess if we could all build things that suck and say we meant to do it and then never had to fix it, we'd all be better off.
    – RSolberg
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 17:15
  • 1
    place a bounty of 500... that'll draw attention
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 17:31
  • 3
    I think that it's excessive exaggeration to say that Stack Overflow "sucks" just because this aspect of the system doesn't work the way you expect it to. There's no need to be rude, or demanding (as you are being in your edit) when making feature requests.
    – Josh Darnell
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 18:29
  • 4
    Attention doesn't correleate to action in this context. The devs aren't exactly falling over each other to earn those rare, valuable MSO rep bounties.
    – Pops
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 18:30
  • @PopularDemand I'm fully aware of that... ;)
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 21:46
  • @jadarnel27 - I'm not being rude. Remember a working principle of stackoverflow is to make the internet a better place. Earth day was yesterday and we can't recycle our own deleted posts... Just saying...
    – RSolberg
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 3:09
  • 3
    RE: Your bounty reason: Looks like it's tagged feature-request to me...
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 3:22
  • See, I told you a bounty would draw attention =)
    – Lorem Ipsum
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 21:19
  • LOL... Declined FTW... So nice to accept a crappy design!
    – RSolberg
    Commented Apr 24, 2012 at 21:26
  • Since June 2013, deleted questions and answers that were posted in the past 90 days, can be seen using the "deleted recent questions" and "deleted recent answers" links on the questions and answers tabs in your user profile.
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 14:55
  • (I've added the same reference to Marc's answer; you might consider accepting that for future readers?)
    – Arjan
    Commented Dec 14, 2013 at 15:52
  • This was the duplicate?
    – RSolberg
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 20:24

7 Answers 7

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Since June 2013, deleted questions and answers that were posted in the past 60 days can be seen using the "deleted recent questions" and "deleted recent answers" links on the questions and answers tabs in your user profile.

In February 2020, this was expanded to posts deleted in the past 60 days, including those posted more than 60 days ago.

In January 2022, the 60-days restriction was removed, and the links were changed to "Deleted questions" and "Deleted answers". All users can now see all their deleted questions and answers.

Prior to that, non-moderator 10k users couldn't see their deleted posts from their profile page either, though they could (and still can) search for them by using deleted:1.

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  • 6
    No, deleted questions are not visible on the profile page for non-diamonds.
    – mmyers
    Commented Aug 8, 2009 at 4:45
  • doesnt seem like this works anymore
    – Dan Powers
    Commented Nov 21, 2016 at 4:51
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    For self-deleted posts looking at deletion votes on the profile page should work too. (This tab contains also delete votes cast on other users' posts, but that is only relevant for 10k+ users and they can search using deleted:1.)
    – Martin
    Commented Jun 2, 2018 at 23:19
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We need an isdeleted: operator for the search box, so that deleted posts can be searched. It would search them all for 10ks, and user-only posts for specific users under 10k.

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  • The latter point wouldn't be... too useful. Answers it'd find, but sub-10k users still can't see their own deleted questions.
    – Grace Note StaffMod
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 20:08
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    @Grace, I mean for them to be enabled to see their own deleted questions.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Feb 10, 2011 at 0:24
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    It's called deleted: and it exists for 10k+ users: meta.stackoverflow.com/a/327259/6083675
    – Laurel
    Commented Jul 1, 2016 at 19:25
  • @Laurel, Thanks, glad they finally added that feature.
    – Lance Roberts
    Commented Jul 1, 2016 at 22:30
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    Can this answer be completed to something giving full details of what it refers to?
    – Dmitri Zaitsev
    Commented Dec 28, 2017 at 4:58
10
+100

If you're looking for a particular deleted post that you own, feel free to email us and we'll find it for you. Our email address is at the bottom of every page.

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  • 1
    Yeah thanks... But what about the posts that you simply can't find. Know you left it, but just don't know where it went?
    – RSolberg
    Commented Sep 3, 2010 at 15:48
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    Mind putting a status-bydesign or some official response on this question?
    – Earlz
    Commented Feb 9, 2011 at 2:27
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    That’s inconvenient at best. A lot of people got multiple questions nuked due to the various “clean-ups” like the anti-identify cleanses. Some people may not care, while others may want to extract their questions to post elsewhere. Having to search the Wayback Machine and trawl through history files, hoping to find them at all, or even directly emailing staff is a poor solution. Worse, that would require actually knowing exactly which questions one had asked that have been deleted instead of just looking at the question/answer lists in the profile page (and ideally clicking a filter).
    – Synetech
    Commented Dec 7, 2013 at 4:56
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    Writing to Mods just to find my own post? Why wasting everyone's time for what can be automated?
    – Dmitri Zaitsev
    Commented Dec 28, 2017 at 4:55
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You should still be able to see your own deleted answers - just find the question and it should be there, in a different colour.

You can then edit it (like I'm doing now - this answer is deleted at the time of editing) and click undelete when you're ready.

I'm testing it here as I have under 10K rep here...

(Just tried it on SU and I've been able to see it there too.)

EDIT: Just tested with a deleted question - it didn't show up in either the question list or my recent activity.

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  • Perfectly visible here ;-p I'm wondering if you'll get "taxonomist" for [delete-me] ;-p
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Aug 8, 2009 at 8:11
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    you have over 10k rep here
    – Benny
    Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 10:30
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    @Benny: I do now... but presumably I didn't back in August 2009.
    – Jon Skeet
    Commented Feb 5, 2011 at 10:35
  • How can I find the question if I only remember keywords from my answer? There would be thousands of questions with that keyword, so can I filter them?
    – Dmitri Zaitsev
    Commented Dec 28, 2017 at 4:59
5

It's been said repeatedly on Christianity SE that deletion is not a death sentence. Deleted posts should be edited, fixed, and undeleted. This is hard to do if you can't find the things.

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  • 2
    That's closed questions, not deleted ones. Closed means that there's a chance to fix them. Deleted are things we're quite certain should go away.
    – Nicol Bolas
    Commented Apr 23, 2012 at 21:43
0

Look in your browser history.

Other than that, the only way currently is to get 10k rep and look through the list of recently deleted posts. The list actually goes clear back to the first question on the site, so yours will be in there somewhere.

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9
  • I've been tempted to scrape it, but I don't want to abuse the site or my account. However, if someone manages to get a dump of the deleted posts, I'd be very interested in getting a copy.
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Aug 7, 2009 at 21:00
  • There's only 5000 pages...
    – mmyers
    Commented Aug 7, 2009 at 21:11
  • Just take it slow, run a cron job scraping 10 pages an hour. It won't change that rapidly. I'm very interested in the list as well, but have no means of obtaining it.
    – Ian Elliott
    Commented Aug 7, 2009 at 21:16
  • That would be very interesting. You could profile exactly what kind of mistakes the community makes.
    – Tyler Carter
    Commented Aug 7, 2009 at 21:33
  • @Kyle - that would be a lot of "asdf" and "Win32/google-groups" posts ;-p
    – Marc Gravell
    Commented Aug 7, 2009 at 22:46
  • @mmyers: Well I was thinking more of the posts themselves than just the titles, but I suppose that would be valuable in its own right
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Aug 8, 2009 at 4:14
  • So deleted posts are included in the dump? I suppose there's no point in hiding them.
    – mmyers
    Commented Aug 8, 2009 at 5:04
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    @mmyers: no, they're not - I would like to see them included though. That's why I'm interested in an unofficial scrape of the deleted posts - I want a better way to search and find them than simply stumbling upon them or going through a 5000 page list
    – Kyle Cronin
    Commented Aug 9, 2009 at 17:23
  • A simple search like user:myuserid deleted:1 sure would be handy.
    – Ether
    Commented Feb 5, 2010 at 4:13
-1

Find a full list of your own activity using user:55747 in the search box. However, the deleted posts will only appear if you have 10K rep.

Right now there does not appear to a flag for deleted posts, so you'll have to scroll through them all...

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5
  • It would be nice if the background colour in the search page used the deleted colour (the purplish tone). But alas.
    – Ether
    Commented Jun 27, 2010 at 4:21
  • @dmckee how might I go about finding what number I should enter for my own activity?
    – Mitchell Carroll
    Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 19:22
  • @MitchellCarroll Hover over or click on your own user name...your ID number is part of the URL for your profile page. But it appears that you need 10k rep for this to be useful. I'd forgotten.
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten
    Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 19:45
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    @dmckee, Deleted posts do not show up on that list, even if you scroll through everything.
    – Pacerier
    Commented Dec 26, 2014 at 22:15
  • You should've mentioned directly in the answer that it's for 10k users only. Yet this answer is obsolete anyway, since 10k users now can use deleted:yes, and for regular users deleted posts do not show up in the search, even their own.
    – user
    Commented Feb 25, 2017 at 21:56

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