When a moderator deletes an answer (not the whole question), is there a text field where they can specify reason?
Searching related discussions here suggests that such an (optional) field does exist when deleting questions. But what about answers?
When a moderator deletes an answer (not the whole question), is there a text field where they can specify reason?
Searching related discussions here suggests that such an (optional) field does exist when deleting questions. But what about answers?
Nope. We need to rely on memory or understanding the scopes of our sites in both cases. In theory we could probably throw in a comment, or even do a flag for "audit" purposes, but generally its self evident enough that I can look at a post I deleted as a new mod, say 5 years ago, or look at a post another moderator deleted, and have a reasonable idea why it was deleted.
It's also worth remembering there's cases where a post can be deleted without mod intervention, either by high rep members of the community (after a post is downvoted), or by flag (spam) or even by a user themselves, and none of these paths have a way to annotate why a post was deleted either.
I’ve seen comments used by moderators to communicate why a post was deleted. This is usually done for the benefit of the OP of the post, so that they know what was wrong with their post and can avoid making the same mistake again (and maybe fix the post so it can be undeleted). This is effective because notifications of comments from moderators are not removed from a user’s inbox when the post is deleted. Moderators can also post comments without the post needing to be undeleted or unlocked. Also note that any users with the ability to see deleted posts can see comments on deleted posts but not deleted comments (which can only be seen by moderators, not that I’m aware of anyone using deleted comments to communicate with other moderators).