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A question from a new user was recently deleted by Community. It had 0 votes to close and was seemingly a good question to me (I answered it). I am curious why it was deleted. Was something wrong with a question itself, or with a used asking it, or with something else?

In future, can it be a good practice for Community to leave a comment explaining why a question was deleted, to precede questions like mine?

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A moderator (in this case me) deleted the user in such a way that the community user (a bot) deleted all the content of the now deleted user. In most cases it does not make sense for an automated message to be attached to the question as only 10k+ users can see the deleted question. As a high rep user, you should just assume that if the community bot deletes a user and all their content, there is a reason for it. If the community user deletes a single question/answer, it leaves a message that says the post was rude or spam (10k+ users can look at the message on this awful answer, I cannot find a community deleted question for reference).

When a moderator decides to delete a user, the decision is not based on any individual question or answer from that user. We also have choices about how we delete the user and what to do about their content and votes. If we decide to delete a user and their content, we generally do not know what will be deleted by the community bot when it cleans up for the user. Therefore, retroactively giving explanations would be really hard.

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  • I don't doubt there was a reason, but I was curious what the reason was. Two users have contributed answers to the question, and now they are wasted. Not a big deal, but it would've been nice to have a brief explanation. Oh, well. There was a reason. Thanks, I guess.
    – Dmitry Savostyanov
    Feb 27, 2019 at 23:55
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    Can we undelete the question, though?
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Feb 28, 2019 at 0:11
  • @MassimoOrtolano we could technically un-delete it, but given the reason the account was deleted it would be inappropriate.
    – StrongBad
    Feb 28, 2019 at 0:14
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    Sorry, but this seems to be in contrast with what has been done in the past for other users who deleted or dissociated their account because they didn't want to be recognised: the user was removed but the question was kept.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Feb 28, 2019 at 0:21
  • @MassimoOrtolano see edit. Yes we can delete a user and keep their content or delete a user and delete their content. In this case it was appropriate to delete the user and their content.
    – StrongBad
    Feb 28, 2019 at 0:22
  • If we decide to delete a user and their content, we generally do not know what will be deleted by the community bot when it cleans up for the user. – That’s not correct. The interface for deleting and destroying users tells you exactly what these options do. Also, we can manually correct this afterwards. That being said, I concur that destroying the user (which deletes all content) was the right choice here.
    – Wrzlprmft Mod
    Feb 28, 2019 at 7:42
  • @Wrzlprmft and StrongBad: The question reappeared here in a slightly milder form which actually hardly justifies the deletion of the original version.
    – Massimo Ortolano
    Feb 28, 2019 at 16:06

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