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On Dec 23, 2013 I edited two of my questions on Physics.SE:

Then I flagged them because one was marked duplicate and other as closed. The flags remained active for nearly four days. I left a comment on https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/82453/are-fields-truely-continues asking the moderator to take some action on my flags, for I was worried that mods had forgotten my flags. Then eventually both of the questions got deleted by the "community moderator".

I suspect the posts deleted by the "community moderator" are indeed deleted by the human moderators. Because my questions were deleted before 9-days I had edited them. That very moderator wanted to show me an action which I requested from him.

Still no action was taken by moderatorss on my flags. After my questions were deleted by the "community moderator" one more surprise came to me: Question 1 was completely removed by moderator. when I tried to enter its URL, I was denied access to it. After this removal the moderator took action on my flags explaining that I need to edit them more.

After some time another weird thing happened: Question 2 was undeleted by the community and Question 1 was unremoved but it is still deleted by the community.

Consequently, I have two questions:

  1. How can a question deleted by community be undeleted? It seems impossible because a question is automatically deleted when it becomes outdated as explained here:(Enable automatic deletion of old, unanswered zero-score questions after a year?)
  2. How is a removed question unremoved?

Through the constructive comments of some nice users i got another question:

Does Community♦ represents a bot or the present working moderators of Stack Exchange websites?

Addendum:
Question 1 has been deleted by the "community moderator" by Dec 28 '13 at 13:15

Improve this question
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  • Community is technically a moderator, so you'll have to flag the posts and request a moderator undeletes them.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Dec 30, 2013 at 14:48
  • @MartijnPieters Where it is mentioned(written). In the help i searched and many links mention that posts deleted by community are infact automatically deleted by some kind of script which is ran every week.
    – user31782
    Dec 30, 2013 at 14:51
  • Yes, Community is the account automatic deletions are attributed to. But because Community is also marked as a moderator, you cannot undelete such posts yourself without help from another (human) moderator.
    – Martijn Pieters
    Dec 30, 2013 at 14:55
  • @MartijnPieters is community a bot or human? Please give me an answer or if theres already something explained about it please give me the link. Thanks for your feedback Alas on Phys.SE users have not enough time to leave a comment.
    – user31782
    Dec 30, 2013 at 14:58
  • @anupam community is just a fake account, "wrapper" for things like automatic questions cleanup and more. There is indeed a script that run every week and deletes downvoted and/or closed questions without answers. To undelete them you have to flag, like you did, but only after you improved them.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:13
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    @ShadowWizard "To undelete them you have to flag, like you did, but only after you improved them". If the posts are deleted by community then the OP is not allowed to edit(/improve) it.
    – user31782
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:28
  • @anupam correct, this might be a bug though.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:33
  • meta.stackoverflow.com/users/-1/community
    – Sathyajith Bhat
    Dec 30, 2013 at 16:37
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    Deleted questions are always attributed to Community, also when a human moderator did it.
    – clabacchio
    Mar 10, 2014 at 8:06
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    @clabacchio Deleted questions are sometimes attribute to "human moderators" when "human moderators" personally delete the question. The OP of the question is allowed to edit their question if they are deleted by the "human moderators". On the other hand when the is question is deleted by the script that is ran every week then deletion is attributed to "community moderator". But in my case something weird happened that's why i suspect - When "human moderators" have some personal problem with the OP they intentionally delete OP's question and mark it "deleted by Community♦" so that[cont...]
    – user31782
    Mar 13, 2014 at 5:11
  • [Cont...] the OP could not save his/her question.
    – user31782
    Mar 13, 2014 at 5:12
  • @anupam mods will never hide behind the Community♦ name, if your post has that mark it means that it's been automatically deleted for one of these reasons.
    – clabacchio
    Mar 13, 2014 at 7:58

1 Answer 1

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The community user is technically a moderator (hence the ♦ next to its name), only moderators can undelete posts that have been deleted by a moderator. This is in place to prevent a moderator deleting problematic content and the author simply undeleting it without addressing whatever concerns the moderator had.

It also (by the nature of how deletion works) applies to automatically culled posts.

To reconstitute a post that has been automatically culled, authors and privileged users can now vote to undelete posts deleted by Community. You can also flag for moderator attention (select "in need of moderator intervention") and request that a moderator intervene.

You can still edit a deleted post that you own, so I highly recommend editing first and then voting to undelete or letting the moderator know that you've made changes to the post so that it's more suitable and would like to have it restored.

And, well, Community ♦ is a serial killer :) Every big city needs at least one.

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  • 2
    Nope, I just confirmed one can't edit his own deleted post when having less than 2K reputation. "edit" link is disabled with "Post is deleted" and trying to navigate directly to the edit URL leads to "This post is deleted and cannot be edited."
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:32
  • Re my previous comment, it's by design see Oded's comment.
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:35
  • One day i edited my post on <electronics.stackexchange.com> without logging in. When i logged in it was marked:_edited by community♦_ but it was actualy edited by myself. I think community♦ is not always a moderator it is used as a dummy name for some actions taken by mod's and also when an edit is made by a person who doesn't have account on SE.
    – user31782
    Dec 30, 2013 at 15:51
  • @anupam Suggested edits made by an anonymous user that get approved use the Community user's name for the revision history. Other actions which are normally applied to a given user, but to which a user cannot be used, have the community user's name used instead.
    – Servy
    Dec 30, 2013 at 16:04
  • "This is in place to prevent a moderator deleting problematic content and the author simply undeleting it without addressing whatever concerns the moderator had.".Correct me if i am wrong: A post cannot be undeleted by the author(OP of that post) if it is deleted by some human moderator. i've edited my question a bit, would you reconsider my question . You might not be obliged to read my question again but if you do it will be greatful.
    – user31782
    Dec 30, 2013 at 17:40
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    @Sha: that should only apply if you were the one who deleted it! In which case, you can just undelete it. If someone else deletes your post, you're supposed to be able to edit it all you want - looks like we slipped a bug in fixing this.
    – Shog9
    Mar 13, 2014 at 5:29
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    The system doesn't know that Community isn't human, @anupam. So the same restrictions apply to Community-deleted posts as apply to those deleted by elected moderators. As Tim notes, you can always just edit your posts and flag asking for them to be reopened.
    – Shog9
    Mar 13, 2014 at 5:30
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    @Shog9 nope. I checked with this post of mine that was deleted by a moderator. I can't undelete it and can't edit it. (not that I want to, just using this to prove my assumption)
    – Shadow Wizard Is Sad And Angry
    Mar 13, 2014 at 8:12
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    "-1", technically incorrect answer. And @Shog9 you say:"you can always just edit your posts and flag asking for them to be reopened." ??? Not if the question is deleted by the comm mod, you know it.
    – user31782
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:11
  • @anupam Are you saying that you own a post that the Community user deleted that the system will not allow you to edit, and you're certain that the post was not also locked? May I have a link to it please?
    – Tim Post
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:26
  • I don't know it is locked or not. There is nothing mentioned whether it is locked or not. physics.stackexchange.com/questions/82673/… AND physics.stackexchange.com/questions/82453/…
    – user31782
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:27
  • I can't reproduce it, but it's tricky to reproduce. I pinged Shog to investigate again. This could be a bug, hang tight.
    – Tim Post
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:29
  • Here it is: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/218273/…
    – user31782
    Mar 14, 2014 at 8:31
  • Will be fixed in the next build, @Sha.
    – Shog9
    Mar 14, 2014 at 17:09
  • 1
    @user31782 Now you can, since the post has been edited.
    – user259867
    Jul 8, 2014 at 20:48

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