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I'm disappointed that a couple days ago I answered a reasonable question about git, only to have the user then delete the question instead up upvoting or accepting my answer.

I had responded to several follow-up questions and clarifications, and in that time no one else had participated at all. I invested a fair bit of time into that, and now I have nothing to show for it, and that knowledge is lost for everyone.

Why would a user do that? Is it wise to let questions and answers disappear like this?

Here was the link to the question at hand: Git merge conflicts - "commit" VS "rebase --continue"

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  • We can't know why he deleted it. You'll have to ask him.
    – Servy
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:11
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    @Revious see singular they. Where a sentence is about someone of unknown gender (or the sentence is about a general individual) signular they is used since we do not know if the person is male or female
    – Richard Tingle
    Feb 27 '14 at 16:07
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    Do we really need to have this fight here?
    – George Stocker
    Feb 27 '14 at 16:14
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    @GeorgeStocker Mentioning it now may avoid a hundred bad edits later. P.s. seemingly yes: Reaching-a-standard-of-gender-neutral-language
    – Richard Tingle
    Feb 27 '14 at 16:15
  • @RichardTingle: thanks
    – Revious
    Feb 28 '14 at 2:51
  • @RichardTingle, I would argue against using "they". Using "they" as a singular makes the sentence less clear. Also see meta.stackexchange.com/a/223422/159916
    – Pacerier
    Aug 18 '14 at 5:04
  • @Pacerier Its worth noting the original poster used the singular they. Where there is a legitimate difference of style or sub language (e.g. color vs colour) the OP wins. Btw, that was also the link from my comment
    – Richard Tingle
    Aug 18 '14 at 14:35
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I don't know that anyone can tell you except the original poster. However, their last comment

Indeed it was just mistake I did. Thanks ! – Flawyte yesterday

Is probably the motivation. The question is why two options were available, and it turns out that they are not - the poster was mistaken and believes the question to be invalid. If this is so, then most likely no knowledge useful to anyone else is lost.

If you believe that others can be helped by this question, then flag it for attention and people may vote to undelete it.

Or, ask the same question yourself and then answer it.

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  • I did see the comment about it being a mistake. But it wasn't clear what part was mistaken, and I still think it was a valid question, wherein the lesson would probably be "don't mix git merge and git rebase commands".
    – pattivacek
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:23
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    I thought there was value in the question, so I undeleted it. I think they might be mistaken about the long-term value of questions and thought that once they got an answer they needed to delete their question to close it out.
    – Brad Larson
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:34
  • Thanks, @BradLarson! I learned a lot here, especially since I didn't realize I could flag it for attention to potentially undelete it.
    – pattivacek
    Feb 27 '14 at 16:48
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It's impossible to know why he deleted it but if you think the question was good (not a duplicate i.e.) you can open another one similar by yourself and answer it again.

EDITED (after comment):

You can access the deleted answer and share the knowledge!

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    You already can access any post of yours which was deleted, including an answer you posted to a deleted question.
    – Andrew Barber
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:24
  • @AndrewBarber: thanks, I've also corrected my answer. If I've correctly understood he can do what I'm sugesting, right?
    – Revious
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:27
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    One can do that, yes. But it would often not be that productive, as sometimes those questions are deleted due to what the asker perceives as a significant weakness in the question. (Of course, there are also people who abuse deletion, thinking of Stack Overflow as a "support ticket" site)
    – Andrew Barber
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:31
  • @AndrewBarber: thanks, I tried to improve the answer to match your guidelines.
    – Revious
    Feb 27 '14 at 15:37

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