Abandoned, unanswered questions can be a nuisance for readers when they appear in search results. While every question deserves a chance to be answered, at some point the annoyance to those searching for a solution outweighs the increasingly small chance that an answer will be provided.

For this reason, [the Community user][1] will automatically delete old abandoned / dead questions in the following circumstances:

**If the question is more than `30` days old, and ...**

- has −1 or lower score
- has no answers
- is not locked

**...or...**

- it was closed and migrated to a different site (i.e. it is a migration stub)

**...or...**

- it was migrated *from* a different site, and then [rejected](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/10249/what-is-migration-and-how-does-it-work)

... it will be automatically deleted. Internally, these are termed "dead" questions (`RemoveDeadQuestions`, `RemoveMigrationStubs` in the case of a migration stub, or `RemoveRejectedMigrations` in the case of a rejected migration).

**If the question is more than `365` days old, and ...**

- has a score of 0 or less, **or** a score of 1 or less in case the owner's account is deleted
- has no answers
- is not locked
- has view count <= the age of the question in days times 1.5
- has 1 or 0 comments
- isn't on a meta site

... it will be automatically deleted. These are "abandoned" questions (`RemoveAbandonedQuestions`).

These checks are run every week across all sites.

**If the question was closed more than `9` days ago, and ...**

- not closed as a duplicate
- has a score of 0 or less
- is not locked
- has no answers with a score > 0
- has no accepted answer
- has no pending reopen votes
- has not been edited in the past `9` days

... it will be automatically deleted. These are "abandoned closed", and show as `RemoveAbandonedClosed`:

[![example of "deleted by Community" notation][2]][2]

This check is run every day across all sites.

See also: The official ["How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean?"][3] FAQ meta post.


  [1]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/19738/who-is-the-community-user
  [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/usHJW.png
  [3]: https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/5221/how-does-deleting-work-what-can-cause-a-post-to-be-deleted-and-what-does-that