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A bit disappointed to see

enter image description here

... since I have put quite a lot of effort and time answering the question also received 55 rep points from it so I can't understand the reason it was removed.

After some discussion in the comments section and some tips from @Molot and @Gnat, I'd like to ask a favor from our moderators; please see the revision history as I believe the question may have got poorer through the editing. I honestly can't remember the question in the original form. All it takes is a simple verification to conclude one of the below two points:

  • If there were no significant changes made to the question I will accept the fact that I shouldn't have answered that question in first place and try to improve my judgement skills in future.

  • If the question got poorer through editing I'd like to ask for the removal to be reversed.

Was the user removed? Please, explain to me why was this deleted?

Some have said that the question was really poor. In the format the cached version yes I do agree it was quite poor, but was it poor enough that it needed to be deleted?

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16
  • Question link: stackoverflow.com/questions/19881863/…
    – John Palmer
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:02
  • 2
    Cached version here (it's quite old though)
    – Stijn
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:08
  • 1
    If the user is removed it clearly shows "user was removed".
    – Himanshu
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:09
  • 5
    I suspect the delete votes were because the question is really bad - the question was deleted and your answer was deleted as a side effect.
    – John Palmer
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:12
  • @JohnPalmer why is the question really "bad"? It's a perfectly valid programming related question. It may not be the highest quality but still a valid question for SO. A great one to answer for someone who was in the same situation (coming from VB.NET to VBA) and great answer wouldn't you agree? Also, worth noticing the question has been edited and we can't see the revision history from the cached version.
    – user221081
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:24
  • 4
    Given the time you put into that answer, you perhaps should have spent some on the question as well. Might have made it less of a target for deletion. It's not all that great, but perhaps (given your answering effort) not entirely doomed either.
    – Bart
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:32
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    Well, 55rep looks like pretty hard hit, but the knowledge that it happens sometimes may stop people from answering bad questions without improving them. And if you really wonder why was question removed, see comment by @JohnPalmer, isn't it enough?
    – Mołot
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:36
  • @mehow as far as I can tell, you ask to explain why you lost 55 - suggested dupe addresses just that (FWIW I lost 20 points yesterday exactly for this reason). If you ask about something else, consider editing the question to help me understand the difference
    – gnat
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:37
  • @Bart yea I could have spend some time on editing the question but when I first answered it there were no close votes. I thought the question was clear so thats why I answered it. Got it accepted and some upvotes and then haven't revisited the page for a while...I didn't get notification saying this question is about to get deleted consider improving it if you dont want to lose 55 points and an hour of your life putting an answer together. it's unfair for me to have this deleted as a whole.. anyone voting to delete should have considered the time put into answering. Purely unfair rules around
    – user221081
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:38
  • 2
    @mehow nope, voting on questions should be based on questions. And if your point of view differs from community's one so much that you can't recognize a candidate for closure when you answer it, yes, you will have problems here. Sadly, proposals to notify answerers about close votes on questions was either declined or not addressed. I'm sure you'll be able to find at least one still open, probably with my upvote on it.
    – Mołot
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:40
  • @Mołot can you see the revision history? I can't say the question was totally changed and stiped from essential parts that convinced me to give an answer, but I can't remember if anything was dramatically changed through editing. I do not have a problem with the recognition of bad and good questions. There are thousands of bad questions hanging around SO because of the answers. They are not deleted but closed because of the good answers that people come here for most of the time.
    – user221081
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:46
  • @mehow I'm 10k only on Drupal Answers, sorry. No revision history, no deleted posts for me at all.
    – Mołot
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:50
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    @mehow well if edits rendered your answer irrelevant to the question, then the question should have been rolled back as chameleon, not deleted. And if edits rendered it bad, editors should get warning ;) We will never know. but if you can post that question on your own, properly this time, and as self-answered one, you may hope for meta effect to make up for your loss.
    – Mołot
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:56
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    Honestly, 4 upvotes is not a lot considering just how much you put into that single answer - I'm surprised you're not bothered that it only got 4 upvotes. And further, it's not a good idea to put such a disproportionate amount of effort into an answer given the question - the worse a question looks the higher the risk of it getting deleted will be, and your answer along with it. Not saying it's a rule, but it's just not worth it.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:57
  • 1
    @Mołot I think editing the current one should give the mods an idea.
    – user221081
    Commented Dec 17, 2013 at 12:57

1 Answer 1

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Well... decided to answer my own question since I now have the access to the deleted question.

I have gone through the revision history and what did I find? haha, I found 2 revisions which I have made on the question over a month ago. (believe me, I have gone through thousands of questions over the last month and my memory let me down on this one particular one).

Even though I have revised the question to make it clearer and/or better in the end it still was a poor one (lacking content/research - not off-topic). This is why I could understand a down vote on the question but a closure and deletion is a bit of an overkill. It almost feels like a punishment - but why punish the answerer who has spent a significant amount of his own time to contribute to Stack Overflow?

I can't just take any question and revise it so much to make it a question deserving an upvote. It's true the OP didn't do a great job asking but the question was understandable.

I honestly did not think this question was going to get closed with an unclear what you're asking as the reason. At the time I answered the question I can't remember it having any close votes anyway. I perfectly understood the question, the 4 upvotes and accepted answer from OP kind of indicated that. I don't think the amount of views would change anything in this situation.

I think the question was understandable; at least for anyone who is top 10% in VBA and has some knowledge of .NET, although yes, very poor(again: for lacking content/research/understanding).

Considering a few factors: quality, acceptance, and votes on the answer I wouldn't personally vote to delete the question, that's a bit harsh.

I can now understand the reason why some people might want to downvote/close the question. I will be more selective in the future with questions I will be attempting to answer. It's a great learning experience...

In addition I'd like to quote something I found on the guide to use Moderation Tools

enter image description here

I am just now starting to feel that my contributions to Stack Overflow are not welcome...

Improve this answer
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  • 3
    It's not that your contributions are not welcome. You're just expending effort in the wrong places. If you think a question is worth answering, but the community at large has shown disagreement, you should edit the question into something that justifies your answers. If you don't want to do that, then you're doing nothing to mitigate the risk of the question being deleted.
    – BoltClock's a Unicorn Mod
    Commented Dec 20, 2013 at 6:25

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