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As a ♦ moderator, can I access any information on deleted user accounts? For example, can I access a log of recently deleted accounts? Or if a post is now shown as posted by userxxxx, can I lookup information related to userxxxx similar to how I can access information related to currently existing accounts?

If yes: how would I access such information?

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    If you manually go to *.SE/u/xxx you'll see some info on the deleted user.
    – Mithical
    Apr 18, 2017 at 14:19

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Okay, so I'm answering this one definitively. I deleted a sock on the site I moderate, and if I go to a post that I edited with that account, I see, userxyz. I then go to https://iot.stackexchange.com/users/userxyz, and I see:

enter image description here

As you can see at the bottom of the screenshot, you can see a list of posts created by the user. Since I hadn't created any with that user, it doesn't show much of anything:

enter image description here

...but I suppose you would be able to see more if the user had created some posts.

I suppose it would be different with a destroyed user, but I only had one sock, so I can't try destroying too. :)

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  • The first links work but the final link does not appear to work for me (Page Not Found on Earth Science Beta), might it be different for self-deleted accounts?
    – gerrit
    Apr 18, 2017 at 14:51
  • @gerrit, you're right, that page only exists right after you delete the user. I've rolled back.
    – anonymous2
    Apr 18, 2017 at 14:53
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    The information that appears when completing the deletion is not particularly useful to moderators, so we don't show it to them afterwards. It's only really useful if something goes terribly wrong. I'm not sure if we even log it anywhere for future reference.
    – animuson StaffMod
    Apr 18, 2017 at 16:56
  • @animuson What could be useful is a log of recently (self-deleted) user accounts as such can be symptoms of problems in the community. Does that exist?
    – gerrit
    Apr 18, 2017 at 17:19
  • So, mods can somehow retrieve a list of the posts on my old, 'suspended-due-to-low-age' account back?
    – Matthew Roh
    Apr 18, 2017 at 23:01
  • @SIGSEGV, we're talking about deletion, which is different from destruction. Depending on the exact reasons for your old account being deleted, it may have been destroyed, meaning that there is no way for the posts to be recovered. If the posts that were associated with that account no longer exist, chances are the account was destroyed, not deleted.
    – anonymous2
    Apr 19, 2017 at 2:22
  • @anonymous2 It was clearly deleted. The posts do exist. (At least I could find some based on their post names)
    – Matthew Roh
    Apr 19, 2017 at 7:16
  • @SIGSEGV In that case, I would say, theoretically, the posts from the account could be recovered, however, mods don't have the tools to do that job. It would take either a Community Manager or even possibly a developer to piece it back together. The entire account could not be recovered, as some things are moved to the Community user when a user is deleted. Furthermore, since "low age" is a legal thing, people working for SE may or may not have the legal right to reattribute the posts to your new account.
    – anonymous2
    Apr 19, 2017 at 11:54
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    AFAIK there is no difference between "destroy" and "delete" in this way — the only difference is that a "delete" only deletes the account, while a "destroy" also does a normal delete on their posts. After that event, there is no difference in the functionality of the userXXXX page — all posts will be listed, whether deleted or not, and regardless of whether they were deleted normally or automatically during a "destroy" action.
    – SevenSidedDie
    Apr 19, 2017 at 14:56
  • @SevenSidedDie, could be. Either which way it would take a CM or dev to put it back together.
    – anonymous2
    Apr 19, 2017 at 16:58
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    @Seven Okay, I'm reading you now. Absolutely true.
    – anonymous2
    Apr 19, 2017 at 20:20

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