I just found out that one of my answers had been deleted 17 days ago. It had 18 up votes and I don't have the rep to see down votes, close votes, or whatever else would have notified me that it was subject to deletion. Also, it was deleted 2 weeks after originally posted. I tried to click the "undelete" link, but it said it couldn't be undeleted due to being deleted by a moderator.
I'm aware of these other Questions, but so far none of them have apparently done anything about a notification and the only thing I can find against a notification is SE/SO thinks they'll get "whiny" responses:
I hesitate to post a link to my Answer, since I'm well aware of the "Streisand effect", but here it is anyway: https://interpersonal.stackexchange.com/a/23480/3616
There is a single comment about it's quality, but it doesn't mention deletion as a result of not following the "include backup" mention. It reads more as an informal suggestion, rather than a strict rules enforcement message. Even though it has 5 upvotes, I'm not sure I ever saw it with votes, and I wouldn't have been notified of those votes anyway. Even so, 5 votes for an informal edit suggestion vs 18 votes for it being a good Answer doesn't really strike me as worthy of deletion. I'm aware that it only takes 5 votes for close (or was that done after the 3 vote change, IDK), but there's no indication to me that the same people who voted for the comment voted to close/delete the answer, or that some people who didn't bother to vote for the comment voted elsewhere.
As others mentioned in their linked Questions, you just get a "surprise, you can't find your Question or Answer anywhere". As a web dev myself, this isn't good UI/UX.
The message box above my Answer just says that it was deleted, but not why, so I'm also essentially clueless as to what would make it better or if it could be improved to remove the deletion. Since there's no reason stated for the deletion, I don't know if it's been deleted for the same reason for the comment or not.
As mentioned in a linked Questions above, all the points I got for the Answer have been nullified, as if they never existed. My Reputation history tab doesn't show me getting (or losing) any points and my histogram of points also doesn't show anything. All obvious history for this Answer is wiped out as if it never happened, so unless I happen to notice the "deleted recent answers" at the bottom of the "Answers" tab, which I rarely go to, I'd never know there was an issue.
I've spent so much time trying to figure out what happened and reading other Q&A's, I'm not sure how I found out it was deleted. Oh, wait, I just figured it out. I went to my Network Profile and it's still listed there, for some reason. It's not even in my own profile's various lists of Answers I've posted, except for that hidden "deleted recent answers" link I've never seen before and didn't know to look for.
One of the Questions above mentioned that SE/SO doesn't want to spam people with close votes or deletions, yet I get notifications when a User is deleted. I also get notifications for when I down vote a Question or Answer. IMO, neither of those are useful notifications, but notification about deleted Questions and Answers sure seems like a useful notification to me, all the other people posting about it, and people up voting those posts. Besides, how many people would be getting spammed about their posts getting deleted? If a single user is making that many bad posts, they probably should be getting spammed.
So my real question is: What is the (real) reason why we aren't notified when something is deleted?
I have a feeling it's because SE/SO doesn't want immature comments defending the post, as someone mentioned in an Answer linked above. However, without those notifications, we often have no way knowing something's wrong. I know I don't sit on my Answers and refresh them every 5 min to see what's going on, especially weeks after it's posted. I'm not even going to sit on this Question waiting for a response.
If SE/SO doesn't want to spam people, at least notify them once they've hit the halfway point to a close/delete quorum as well as when it's actually acted on. I realize good Questions and Answers get random or malicious close/delete votes, so not everything necessarily needs a notification, but a half compromise between "nothing" and "spam" needs to be found.
FYI, I'm moving/re-asking this question here based on the comment made by EmC here:
https://interpersonal.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3939/deletion-notification
As a side note, I didn't get any notification for the down vote on that question. I wouldn't have known it was received poorly without the comment. I remember getting down vote bubble notifications (as in -2 RP), but some months (I think) back they stopped. Now I have to click on the "Recent Achievements" icon to see them, though I didn't get that much notification for my Question above. To me, this sounds as if SE/SO wants to hide as much negative feedback from the user as possible, and just surprise them with it all when they go back to their post. Again, this doesn't seem like good UI/UX to, me as a developer or as a user.
After modification to include sources for backing my claims, my post was restored, however I also didn't get any notification for this either. The history of the up-votes "magically" reappeared in my timelines as if it had never been deleted. I'm glad it's able to be seen again (as well as the rep I regained), but I'm still confused as to why I haven't gotten any sort of notification about this sort of change. Deletion and restoring of posts seems like the type of major change users should get notifications for.
I just had another question deleted 25 days ago with no notifications.
This was deleted by Community. Evidently because it has -1 votes and I haven't constantly been updating it, the "Roomba" script decided I didn't need an answer.
