Why was my accepted answer deleted by a moderator? [closed]

Question

I read the FAQ regarding deletion here: https://stackoverflow.com/faq#deletion

Nothing in that could explain why my answer (which was originally accepted by the OP) was deleted by a moderator.

Here is a link to the answer (10k only). Here is the answer's content, for those who cannot see it:

---

You can keep a run-count, and use normal_duration + 30000 as the setTimeout delay for the X+ 1st time.

var runCount = 0, runsBeforeDelay = 20;
function myslidefunction(){

    // .. stuff

    runCount++;
    var delay = 0;
    if(runCount > runsBeforeDelay) {
        runCount = 0;
        delay = 30000;
    }
    setTimeout(myslidefunction, 400 + delay);
};

// start it off
setTimeout(myslidefunction, 1000);

---

Can anyone shed some light into the "why" part of this as I really cannot see why my successful attempt at helping the OP was deleted as if it was some kind of spam.

Also, what kind of rights do moderators have? Are there any steps if someone decides to be mischievous?

Answer 1

I can't shed light on the deletion of the specific post in question, as I wasn't involved. I'm not sure I would have deleted it. It's possible it will be undeleted due to the attention you've brought and argument you've made about it. I've undeleted it for now, as I think it was probably a goof to delete it.

As for 'rights'; we do have the ability to unilaterally delete content. Generally, we only do so when content is flagged, or we happen across something that seems obvious to us as needing deletion.

If a moderator should choose to become 'mischievous' - or even malicious - that is not likely to last long at all. As Undo notes, moderators can not permanently delete things, and there are always community members who can review these things. Members can re-flag deleted posts, and if any pattern were to emerge, the offending moderator would be 'corrected' with measurable dispatch.

Answer 2

I was the moderator that deleted your post.

I goofed.

Technical answer: Your post was flagged as 'not an answer'. I did not 'expand' the post, so I didn't see the actual code you posted (in the default view, we only see the first two lines of your answer -- we also don't see whether or not the post was accepted. All we see is the post and the first two lines of the response). Based on what I saw, it appeared to be a comment masquerading as an answer.

I was wrong.

It's been undeleted.

In the future, if you think your post was wrongly deleted, your most immediate step would be to flag the post for undeletion with your reasoning. If you don't get an acceptable answer (or you think we've gone out of our minds), then bring it to meta.

The reason I advocate flagging first is that if everyone who had a post deleted brought their issue to meta, we'd be overrun with posts. I've deleted 134 posts just today. Can you imagine 134 questions if (God forbid) people thought their post shouldn't be deleted?

On Handling Flags

There are a lot of factors that go into handling flags, and hopefully this will explain why there are mistakes (in a perfect world, we wouldn't make mistakes):

Yesterday, there were around 2500 flags in the queue total (over 24 hours).

When I was handling this particular flag, there were around 300 flags in the queue when I started handling flags:

If we assume a moderator spends 10 seconds average looking at a flag, then we can conclude that it would take 50 minutes to handle 300 flags in the queue, if no more flags came in.

300 flags * 10 seconds per flag / 60 seconds in a minute = 50 minutes

That means we'd be spending over 7 hours looking at flags if there were 2500 flags in the queue!

2500 flags * 10 seconds per flag / 60 / 60 = 6.9 hours

If there are 10 active moderators, that's 40 minutes per moderator, per day. That's do-able.

This assumes we don't do the following:

• Expand the post
• visit the page to see the post in context (even if we expand the post, we still only see that post, we don't see it in context to the page)
• elect to leave a comment instead of the default responses (Mark flag helpful, mark flag declined, delete the post, convert post to comment)

That means that if you want moderation that is personal, and advocates a personal response instead of just action, you're talking about adding potentially a minute to each flag. Let's see what that would do:

300 flags * 60 seconds per flag / 60 seconds in minute / 60 minutes in hour = 5 hours

Then handling 2500 flags in a day becomes a task that takes:

2500 flags * 60 seconds per flag / 60 seconds in minute / 60 minutes in hour = 41 hours

That means that it'd take 41 hours collective moderator time per day to handle all the flags in the queue. If we assume 10 active moderators per day, that's still 4.1 hours per moderator, per day. We have 16 moderators. If all the moderators were active, every day, then that's still 2.5 hours per moderator, per day.

If we assume an hourly $150 / hour for developer time, that means that it would cost a moderator $375 dollars a day to moderate Stack Overflow, if we assume every moderator should be fully engaged and communicative.

Put simply, that doesn't scale.

This is why we tend to act on flags rather quickly: There's no way to stay ahead of the rush if we don't. That's also why we make mistakes. If I spent a full minute on every flag, I probably wouldn't make any mistakes.

The solution (of course) is to crowdsource as much as possible. Maybe that means reworking the 'not an answer' flags to go through the 10K queue until it's either deleted or disputed x number of times.

Answer 3

It's important to note that moderators make mistakes. Unfortunately, they're all human.

Humans have this nasty tendency to make errors. It's hard to comprehend, and it took a while for me to understand what an 'error' even was.

I expect this... 'mistake' to be rectified shortly. That, or it isn't a mistake, and will be clarified shortly.

Answer 4

I'm not 10k, so I can't see the affected question, but I will try to explain the potential problem with mods being mischievous:

All 10k users can see deleted posts, including who deleted them. There is no way for a mod to just wipe a questions from the face of the earth - some people will always be able to see it.

If someone notices a pattern of a mod deleting good content, a post will be raised here on Meta about it. The actions of the mod will be discussed, and if a majority vote is reached among the other mods that the mod should be removed, they will be dismissed.