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An answer of mine was deleted recently.

Without a comment. Without any kind of message. Just poof gone.

Why does an SE post vanish like that? Why am I not even notified of this?

I have the privilege myself, but I was under the impression that delete votes where for post scoring -3 and lower. My answer never did. It did gather 3 downvotes, but it also had three upvotes. So what happened?

Would it be hard to implement a message saying "Your post #X has been deleted by means of #Y because of reason #Z"?

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    It was flagged for deletion apparently and showed up on the queue. As for why it was deleted, I would think it would be obvious. You insulted OP's friend, you accused the OP of potentially trolling and then mocked the post itself. But the other thing is that it's not an answer, it's a comment. I'm bewildered that you would be even a little surprised, given your rep and how long you've been here.
    – Chris E
    Aug 1 '16 at 14:42
  • @ChristopherEstep I call a potential troll a troll when I see him or her. A lot of people agreed by downvoting the post. The answer was "there is no answer to a troll" (whether it's the OP or their friend, I cannot tell). But it's not about the content. It's about the fact I wasn't even notified. Why wasn't I notified of my post being deleted? I'm notified of any crap happening on this site, deletion should be on top of that list, right?
    – nvoigt
    Aug 1 '16 at 14:46
  • Keep in mind that just because someone else is <wrong, dumb, ignorant, bigoted> does not mean it's suddenly "ok" to be that way back to them. Check out the Be Nice section of the help center. And the obligatory XKCD on the subject.
    – enderland
    Aug 2 '16 at 1:26
  • I had an answer deleted that had over +30 votes, que sera sera, got to be philosophical about these things :)
    – Kilisi Mod
    Aug 5 '16 at 11:46
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If you look at the review queue task for this post it was deleted through the low quality review queue.

As far as I know, there is no mechanic built into Stack Exchange to notify upon deletion of content - whether question, answer, or comment. It is possible in a review queue to add a comment (which will notify the post owner) but otherwise there is no notification.

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    hm, at least that's interesting info. Do you think it's as intended that we get no feedback on deletion, or does it make sense to request that feature? I think deletion is one of the most drastic measures a site can take, so there should be at least a message.
    – nvoigt
    Aug 1 '16 at 16:16
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    @nvoigt honestly? For every improperly deleted post there are probably hundreds that were worthy of deletion. I'm not sure there is much value in publicizing this given that most are properly deleted.
    – enderland
    Aug 2 '16 at 1:24
  • I agree all a message that your post was deleted is likely to do is spur the average user to protest the deletion. Adding more conflict to the SE is not constructive.
    – IDrinkandIKnowThings
    Aug 4 '16 at 18:48
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The consensus on meta so far seems to be that a deletion is not an actionable event so a notification makes no sense. When a post is deleted the poster has no way of reacting to that, short of reacting emotionally. The content cannot be recovered. The majority of deleted posts is of such low quality that there's no point in alerting authors that it's gone.

Compare it to a stealth ban: we silently remove something that provided no value and in doing so a lot of potential conflict is avoided. Deletions are not done lightly and incorrect deletions of valuable content will rarely happen. That trade-off seems to be worth making.

See these related meta threads:

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