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I went to edit an answer I had made and found my answer was gone. The question was deleted as spam/offensive: My boss is very indirect and conflict-avoidant (in contrast to me). Should I take their answers to requests at face value or read into the 'nuances'?

It also looks like the user has been deleted, but I wouldn't expect user deletion to mark their questions as spam/offensive.

I didn't see anything spammy in there, so I am under the impression enough users flagged it as offensive instead. It is lengthy and might benefit from some whittling down to the meat of the question, but I didn't think it was offensive. Some might see it as a bit of a rant, but I thought rants were generally closed as off topic. I think at least one comment mentioned it might be better off on IPS instead.

Should I have flagged it instead of answering it?

Photo for those who can't see it.

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  • 3
    Any post that starts out with 'I created a sock puppet...' is a waste of time to answer unless it's gone viral and is now going to be difficult to delete. '+3' is not viral.
    – Mazura
    Jan 19, 2020 at 21:11
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    @Mazura Fair point for deletion purposes. Still, I was under the impression second accounts were "acceptable" on SE so long as they weren't used for vote fraud or other cross-account actions. Per the accepted answer, the line was crossed. I don't have much participation in SE sites that are more likely to need these kinds of sock puppet accounts, but I can understand why they are made. I will keep this in mind though.
    – Booga Roo
    Jan 19, 2020 at 21:24
  • I think leeway is given (and should be), but it always violates the ToS afaik.
    – Mazura
    Jan 19, 2020 at 21:26

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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This post and the corresponding user were removed due to posting irregularities observed by the moderation team. The reason it was flagged as spam is that such a flag will automatically apply an IP block as well.

We prefer to avoid deleting questions in this way as the community suffers for it considering the effort they put into answers and edits so we typically only do this in egregious circumstances and when it is clear that further community effort on the question would be wasted.

Should I have flagged it instead of answering it?

Typically we encourage good faith interaction with all posts on the site. If you suspect potential issues with a post please flag. If a post has issues but there is a useful and valuable question in it then edits are encouraged instead, if needed after closing the question to rework it first.

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  • I had a sneaky suspicion along these lines, but only after the deletion. I didn't want to make any assumptions. Thanks for the clarification in this specific situation. I am guessing un-deletion would undo the behind-the-scenes work that is needed in this case. C'est la vie.
    – Booga Roo
    Jan 15, 2020 at 13:14
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    "Typically we encourage good faith interaction with all posts on the site." - Key aspect here :)
    – DarkCygnus Mod
    Jan 15, 2020 at 16:49
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    Typically we encourage good faith interaction with all posts on the site. I wish that appeared in bold at the top of every review queue, and next to the vote to close button.
    – dwizum
    Jan 15, 2020 at 18:17
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    @BoogaRoo If you think the question can be salvaged we could undelete it, but given the amount of work that would probably be involved in turning a question this specific into something of general value it would probably make more sense to post a new question on the topic yourself.
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Jan 15, 2020 at 18:37
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    I had considered trying to salvage it, but the amount of effort to write up a legitimate scenario with my own experience wasn't worth it. Even my answer was rather limited in scope and I'm fine with it staying deleted. I was more interested in finding out what I "missed" when I found the question deleted as spam/offensive. This answer explains it nicely, so I consider the matter closed.
    – Booga Roo
    Jan 15, 2020 at 21:45
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    @BoogaRoo And thank you for the due diligence in following up and flagging this discussion for our attention. :)
    – Lilienthal Mod
    Jan 16, 2020 at 9:41
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Not really sure what's going on there - the latest revision of the question is pretty much meaningless so I wonder if that was what people flagged for removal. A rollback to a previous version that actually resembled a question might have been a better move.

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  • Interesting. When I see it, there's an "edited Jan 9 at 21:00" link that takes me to a page not found, so I cannot see the revisions. Are you able to see a later revision? Also, I imagine most remedies normally used for self-post vandalism(if that's the case here) would normally be beyond the privileges available at my rep level.
    – Booga Roo
    Jan 15, 2020 at 9:46
  • Yeah I believe you need 10k to see the "deleted" content - your screen shot shows the original revision, that latest Jan 9 version is short bears very little relation to the original and definitely doesn't contain a question.
    – motosubatsu Mod
    Jan 15, 2020 at 9:50
  • Hrm, well the answer I posted was on Jan 11. The screenshot is the version I see when I go to the question link right now. Maybe there was some edit or version that led to the deletion that I can't see. There was at least one other answer I remember seeing at around +8 in score, so it seems like the question and answers were received positively. Would be too much to request un-deletion? It's not my question, but it feels like a loss of potentially useful material.
    – Booga Roo
    Jan 15, 2020 at 10:02
  • Not sure why you saw (and continue to see) the older version tbh - some caching screw up possibly. The post is deleted and locked by the community "mod" so I'm unable to vote to undelete, only a mod can.
    – motosubatsu Mod
    Jan 15, 2020 at 10:15
  • The edit history does seem messed up. Usually, with an edit, you can look from one revision to the next and the marked up changes show all the differences. With this question, it appears as if there are major jumps in the edit history - if you take the first revision and apply the marked up changes, then compare that to the before state in the second revision, they're totally different. It also has two separate "post deleted by community" entries in the history, which I've never seen before. Maybe I should ask a separate question to explain this
    – dwizum
    Jan 15, 2020 at 18:21

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