Just to formally document the exact policies we have in place to remove old abandoned / dead questions, the Community user will delete 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
... 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 of deleted owner
- 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 main (non-meta) 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
9days
... it will be automatically deleted. These are "abandoned closed", and show as RemoveAbandonedClosed:
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?" FAQ meta post.
