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Could that be a bug or a hidden feature?

https://stackoverflow.com/posts/2685541/revisions

I'm sure my original post contained the first line I added later but somehow it disappeared completely. Vanished! Edit history shows nothing. The Google cache entry for the original one is here.

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  • 6
    That looks like automatic salutation removal, but I thought that was only triggered when the post is submitted or on an edit. Jun 21, 2011 at 17:15
  • 3
    @Bill The last line in Jeff's answer: "I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts."
    – user229044
    Jun 21, 2011 at 17:24
  • @meagar: Ah, I didn't catch that part. I guess he ran a script against the database that didn't leave a revision history behind. Jun 21, 2011 at 17:35
  • I wish there was a way to signify that my intent was different. I hope no one will run that script again. Jun 21, 2011 at 20:23

2 Answers 2

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As reported in this answer from Jeff Atwood, the salutation is removed when the post is submitted to the server. That means the salutation is removed before the post is saved in the database. In the history of the post doesn't appear anything because the post is not first saved, and then modified.

I got really tired of performing this edit over and over, so anything matching the form of [regular expression] is removed automagically at the time of submission to the server.

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As kiamlaluno describes, there is a new feature that removes these salutations when the post is entered. But your post is over a year old and this feature is only weeks old!

The key part is at the very end of the answer that kiamlaluno posted (Jeff Atwood speaking):

I've also removed most of the salutations (per above) across the network from existing posts.

Interestingly, it seems like the removal was done on a database or dev-access level. If my voice counted for anything, I would have said that it should be done as a revision by Community, with a comment like "Removing salutation according to new automatic filtering rules", but maybe the number of revisions generated would have been too expensive.

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