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I recently posted a question and soon after realized I shouldn't've posted it yet. It very quickly got a downvote and from what I know you shouldn't delete a downvoted question and repost it. What should I do in the future if I ever do this again?

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You're missing an option!

You can delete the question, draft an update to it (in a word processing program, for example), and then undelete it and edit it to reflect what you want. As long as the question doesn't have an upvoted answer, you can delete it.

It's even in the help center:

Self-deleted questions can be viewed and undeleted by their original authors. If you delete your own question, you must undelete it before you will be able to edit it.

You don't have to repost it, you just click "undelete" and it goes back to being live on the site, at which point you can edit it quickly. We actually very much encourage this! We love it when people posting questions improve the question. Heck, you don't even need to delete it unless you don't think you can edit it quickly enough to get it in shape before it attracts more downvotes.

For an explanation of the reasoning behind this, see Oded's answer here. (Hint - spam makes it so that we can't have nice things)

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    If you make the edits within five minutes of posting, and no one has answered or commented, your edit will be considered part of the original revision.
    – Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:01
  • I didn't realize you could undelete questions, this is exactly what I was looking for. Now I have to wait for the on hold to be revoked and the answer accepting timer to accept this
    – pfg
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:06
  • Hey, Apparently the help pages were wrong until two minutes ago, @pfg I'm going to update this answer shortly.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:09
  • oh I have to prepare an edit, undelete it, then quickly do the edit before anyone notices how horrible the question is
    – pfg
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:10
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    @pfg Yes, but if you prepare the edit before hand, you'll be fine.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:11
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    If anyone's curious why this is implemented like this, Oded's answer here explains that it relates to spam.
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jan 30 '18 at 0:21
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    Why aren't edits available while it's deleted? That kinda discourages editing to improve deleted questions...
    – user1228
    Jan 30 '18 at 18:16
  • @Won't the comment immediately before yours answers that...
    – Catija StaffMod
    Jan 30 '18 at 18:23
  • But it's a comment and is pretty much useless? That's why I usually don't read them...
    – user1228
    Jan 30 '18 at 18:25
  • @pfg - You indicated the question was on hold, at this point, no point in deleting the question. Just improve the question, it will be sent to the queue to be reopened, and if it truly is improved it will be reopened.
    – Ramhound
    Mar 10 '18 at 15:41
  • @Ramhound I was talking about what I could do before everyone saw the question to fix it, not after leaving it up and getting it put on hold. It did end up getting reopened but next time I know I can just delete it and fix it before being put on hold
    – pfg
    Mar 10 '18 at 19:42

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