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The removal of a user might result in the loss of upvotes on some of my questions, which might in turn result in roomba* (Stack Exchange's automated question deletion system) deleting some of my questions (in case they now fit some removal criteria).

Typically, if I get a downvote on a question I check that it won't cause it to be deleted by roomba, but when a user gets removed I cannot see which posts the user had upvoted, and subsequently cannot see which of my questions are deletion candidates for roomba. I could write a query on Stack Exchange Data Explorer, but the latter is updated every week while roomba runs every day.

How can I prevent my questions from being removed by roomba after a user was removed?

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roomba* = Stack Exchange's bot that deletes questions that meet some criteria such as 0 score, <= 2 comments, 0 answer, >= 1-year-old, not enough views.

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    Clarification: The one-year dead questions check is run once a week. Only the closed-for-9-days check is run every day.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Jul 11, 2016 at 4:08
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    @animuson Thanks, I didn't know. Still not ideal though :/
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 11, 2016 at 4:15
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    I'm not saying this is your intent but doesn't this defeat at least some of the justifcation why the roomba exists? I'm not going saying you're asking this to abuse it but any user that now creates a sock-puppet to upvote their own post can at least prevent that crap is being removed. Again, not wanting to sound rude but if your question didn't pick-up enough legit votes and no qualifying answers why should we keep it? Isn't maybe the problem that on slower sites the roomba should back-off a bit as good posts need a bit more time to mature?
    – rene
    Jul 11, 2016 at 8:11
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    @rene well, the OP's concern here is that he can't see what upvotes have been removed, which is a valid concern.
    – Shadow The GPT Wizard
    Jul 11, 2016 at 14:00
  • @ShadowWizard sure, I understand the concern and I'm not suggesting that the concern is not valid. It is somewhat similar though to getting a notification when rep is lost. All those FR's have been declined so far. And besides the user removed there is also voting reversed which could lead to the same issue, right? Revealing to much about that might enable tracking the user voting on stuff.
    – rene
    Jul 11, 2016 at 14:10
  • @rene I agree that the main issue is roomba itself, especially on low traffic Stack Exchange websites. E.g. on Health SE, over 25% of my questions received 0 vote and 0 answer (health.stackexchange.com/users/43/…). Unfortunately it seems that the most active SE users wants to keep roomba (probably partly because the most active SE users tend to write answers, not questions).
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 11, 2016 at 15:25
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    @rene My intent is not to cheat Roomba but simply make a backup of my question so that can ask it somewhere else, or improve it if it is possible. Writing a question can be time-consuming, and it's annoying to have it wasted.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 11, 2016 at 15:26
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    As you focus in this question on the roomba the best outcome might be a slower clean-up rate on sites with less traffic. But that only is delaying the inevitable and doesn't prevent deleting. As I don't expect real-time/active feedback on negative reputation events to be ever implemented, maybe a weekly e-mail that summarizes the posts that might need your attention is within reach. You might want to run this weekly to keep an off-line copy of your post until anything is either changed or implemented.
    – rene
    Jul 11, 2016 at 15:41
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    @rene Thanks, the script works great. Yes, one day I asked When a user has one of his question or answer deleted, why don't you notify him about the deletion, and send the removed content by email?, it got some traction but nothing has been done.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Jul 11, 2016 at 16:06
  • Interesting your screenshot is from Ask Ubuntu but that site is like 21st on the list of sites you've made points in. I bring it up because AU is my most often used sites and User Deleted happens infrequently for me loosing points.
    – WinEunuuchs2Unix
    Aug 1, 2017 at 0:56
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    I'm planning on posting another feature request asking for the system to send an email one month in advance of a question being about to be deleted by the 1-year Roomba script that deletes zero-voted questions, to tell the user to edit the question to explain progress, post a self-answer if they've since found the solution, put a bounty on the question, or delete it themselves. Would be nice if you'd let me know some arguments for implementing it that I could incorporate in my post, or if you'd post an answer to it supporting it.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 28, 2020 at 8:30
  • @SonictheK-DayHedgehog thanks I'll be happy to upvote it and post answer supporting it. no specific argument aside from respecting user content is a core principle of any decent website. Related: meta.stackexchange.com/q/209694/178179
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Oct 28, 2020 at 14:08
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    Yeah, unfortunately, I've gotten a lot of flack and downvotes on my perfectly good feature requests simply because they didn't make a strong argument for implementing the feature. It would be nice if I had some arguments, to increase the chances others will receive it well, and that the team will implement it.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Oct 28, 2020 at 19:53
  • @SonictheK-DayHedgehog I see what you mean. Common sense is too often lost when people are voting here. I'm not sure how to come up with a stronger argument than "please don't delete good content", however I wouldn't be surprised if some people downvote. One of the many issues is that people here tend not to be askers, but rather answerers, so they don't care much about questions being removed. In the answer to your question I would've simply evoked some statistics on my account: >100 of 0-score questions automatically removed, e.g. i.stack.imgur.com/FiuyY.png
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Oct 29, 2020 at 2:42
  • Downloading the weekly dump and extracting any new questions and answers of yours might be an alternative if your use case is to preserve your contributions off-site.
    – tripleee
    May 24 at 10:00

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