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Usually when answer gets deleted directly (i.e. not as side effect of its parent question deleted) it says "deleted by [name here] [time stamp]". Plus, it always leave a revision.

However, I just stumbled over this answer on Stack Overflow:

Weird, don't you think? Looking in the question revisions, nothing strange in there and nothing strange in its timeline as well.

Finally, the last straw... revisions of the deleted answer itself:

Another thought was maybe some automagical conversion to comment, but no such comment exists.

Can anyone shed some light over this phenomenon?

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  • The name Low Quality Posts reviewers feature request is fixed, so this should be status-completed. With many of the reviewers somewhat high rep I can't help but think that we didn't need to wait for 6, but that's a different matter.
    – Rob
    Nov 28, 2019 at 13:50

1 Answer 1

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The Low Quality review queue is to "blame": https://stackoverflow.com/review/low-quality-posts/2322114.

As of April 5th, 2014, all future deletions by low-rep users from review will create a special post history entry that includes a link to the review task that resulted in the deletion:

Post Deleted From Review

Unlike deletions performed by moderators or trusted users, post authors can always undelete posts deleted by low-rep users via /review - however, doing so will raise a flag for moderator review.

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  • 4
    So 6 3K+ users can nuke answers without leaving a trace? Sounds like a major bug to me. In the least, their names should appear as those who deleted, don't you agree?
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:43
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    @ShaWizDowArd Well, only low quality answers... and it's not entirely without a trace - 10k users can still see it and other users can vote to undelete it, for example. That said, I agree that we should (maybe) show the names or at least include a mention of the review queue and an entry in the revision history. It's been on my mental backlog for a while now, but more pressing issues keep cropping up.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:45
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    I mean more like "without leaving tracks" i.e. can't backtrack who deleted it.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:46
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    @ShaWizDowArd We still have the data on it. You might need to get a moderator to dig up a link to the review itself, if you can't find it in the queue's history, but other than that, all this information is available... just more difficult to find than it could be.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:47
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    Would be nice if it said "deleted by review 29 mins ago" where "review" could be a link to the review item itself. @ShaWizDowArd: Actually listing them all as the people who deleted doesn't seem feasible since they don't actually have delete privileges.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:47
  • @animuson fair enough, thanks!
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 15, 2013 at 21:47
  • Or even deleted by Community♦ like it is for spam-nuked posts
    – Rory
    Jun 15, 2013 at 22:33
  • @Rory I think that would be worse, largely because "deleted by Community ♦" already has a very clear meaning.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Jun 15, 2013 at 22:34
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    @AdamLear is it not a very similar process though, six members of the community recommending the deletion of a post?
    – Rory
    Jun 15, 2013 at 22:35
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    @Rory not really, "deleted by Community♦" means deleted by some automated process without direct human intervention (e.g. old abandoned questions cleanup). I tend to agree with Anna here. "Community♦" is the specific account of the "Community User", not the community as whole.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 16, 2013 at 13:09
  • Forgot to mention, you can now safely mark this one as status-completed. :-)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Jun 9, 2014 at 6:22

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