I answered  and just after commenting "Yep that seems to be working! Thank you so much!" the question author deleted the question (and, thus, my answer).  Is this behavior considered appropriate on SO?  Shouldn't it be discouraged?
123421
This has happened to me at least 3 times in the past few weeks. Basically, a user asks a question. I put some time and thought in an answer and reply to their question. I come back a bit later to see if they have commented on my answer and I don't have any notifications. Fine then, I check my list of recent answers but I can't find it in there. Perplexed, I check my browser history and retrace the question   I'm not sure what the purpose of this is, but perhaps someone could clear it up for me? Why do people do that? Is it because they realized what the answer was themselves? In this case, they should probably post an answer and accept it, to help other people who will encounter the same problem? Maybe from the answers they were given, they realized that the question's answer was obvious, and are ashamed of having asked it? Even in this case, I still don't think they should delete the question, but instead accept an answer and thus reward those who gave time answering their question, and maybe help others with the same problem in the future.  Am I the only one seeing this or is this a common problem? I wish I could retrace all the times this has happened to me. Is there something that can be done against this?
112264
I'm looking at , which was closed as off-topic a few days ago. Just a few minutes ago, the OP radically revised it; it doesn't even resemble the original question anymore. In fact, the two versions only share about seven words and some punctuation. Here's a screenshot of the most recent revision:    So, the question for the community is this: Is this proper, or should it be rolled back?  Edit: I went ahead and rolled it back because it has a couple of answers already (responding to the old version). But I would still like to know the community consensus on this.
80500
I came across  question, which is fairly old, has 2 very good answers (with a good amount of up-votes), and the OP has stated in his question that both of the answers are acceptable. Yet they have not accepted either and simply left a note in their original question about the "correct" answer.  Is there anything that needs to be looked at here? Should I comment that the OP should accept an answer if they have one? Should I flag it?
29952
I've just answered .  After accepting the answer, the OP then changed his question to another problem - which I know I shouldn't have answered (I should have requested as new question) but I updated my answer anyway.  The OP has now edited his question to remove the essence of either the original or new problem, and instead has a statement saying that the problem has been fixed.  What is the correct thing to do here?  Roll the question back so it's in its original state? Roll it back to the "new problem" state? Leave it and let him continue to get downvoted and/or closed by people who didn't see the original question?
19551
Regarding , made by me, and general questions in this matter. I did receive decent answers on the question that was asked, but it wasn't asked clear enough by me I now see. I do not want to invalidate the answers by completely restructuring the question. Should one post a new question ignoring the other? or Should one refer to their old post and writing a short &quot;because x I reposted this...&quot;?
31197
My question concerns . I asked the question, and at the time selected the correct answer. However, time passes and libraries get updated, and now a different answer is actually correct.   I should probably select this new answer as the correct answer, but I feel bad for the person that will lose 15 reputation points even though is answer was the a good answer at that given point in time.  Any suggestions?
41136
Should I edit out the (thankfully obsfucated) e-mail address from this ?  Is this something we should allow on the site going forward?  I don't care about the "thank you" or "hello", but this might lead to an answer being sent by e-mail, which would mean it wouldn't be peer reviewed (for what that's worth), and the answer would be lost to the community.
51805
I have come across this scenario on several occasions where a user posts a comment that answers the question. When they receive positive feedback, they post it as an answer. Is this bad practice? In my own case, if I am not 100% sure I will comment first and see if that worked for the OP. Sometimes there are more than one problem and that is why I don't post an answer immediately. Here is an example  that illustrates the issue. Should the first commenter get the credit, or the first answerer?
19005
While reviewing the 10k queue just now, I noticed that someone has evidently searched for and flagged self-accepted answers like        What is the proper way to handle ? Should they be flagged as "not an answer", or should they be left alone?  On the one hand, these answers obviously make no attempt to answer the question. On the other hand, these answers may imply that "I'm no longer looking for an answer — don't bug me."
92785
Are comments on answers to my question supposed to show up in my recent activity? If not why not, I would like to know any activity on a question that I posted.  Request: Be notified of all activity on any question that I post including comments to answers posted to my question.
23084
I have in this question:  an example of an answer (of mine) which while valid, especially for developers looking to avoid 3rd party libraries, was not used by the asker. In spite of what were (in my opinion) clear instructions - the user used the wrong regex string even after multiple attempts and did not see their desired results, and so gave up on the solution and downvoted it.  As an answerer defending my rep (especially around a milestone that controls privileges) - my only immediate reaction is to delete the answer so that the downvote no longer counts towards my rep total.  I still strongly feel that this sort of answer would be useful to future visitors who aren't limited by the inability to follow instructions - but why leave it up when all that effort only leads to a loss of rep?  (I apologize for the frustration exhibited in this post.)
95416
I just failed . This post looked good; very concise. However given that the question had 5 other answers, I thought the odds of this post being just a repeat of information in another answer was quite high.   I opened up the question, and the very first answer was the same as this one, word for word, and highly upvoted. Aha! I thought to myself, someone plagiarising for cheap rep. And I went to flag.  But as it turns out, the duplicate answers were one and the same, anonymised for the review.  I tried to have a think of ways to prevent this occurring, but I have to admit I'm drawing a bit of a blank. Does anyone else know of a way?   n.b.: I'm aware that a small amount of false positives as a price for catching more robo-reviewers is pretty reasonable, so if this isn't easily fixable I guess that's fine.
85796
Why can't I comment on my deleted post if I don't agree with the reasons for deletion?  My answer to  was deleted, but I don't believe syntax checking and grammar/spell checking are the same.
31045
I recently asked a question that got a quick answer that was wrong.   After a few comments with the answerer, he stopped defending his position (because it does not work).  But the answer is still there to mislead others.  So I am left wondering if I should do anything about it or just let the eventual downvoting take its course.
88779
I came across  answer earlier today, which I deemed trivial (all it gave was the solution, not an explanation of why it worked or how to prevent this from happening in the future, and was practically copied from the comments above, which were posted about two minutes before).   I left a comment explaining why I downvoted, and a few people took offense to it:     @RichardJ.RossIII You're downvoting an answer that answers the OPs question? – modifiable lvalue        @RichardJ.RossIII habitually violates the rules. Since this answer is not wrong or dangerous and is in fact useful, it should not be downvoted. +1 to compensate. – Jim Balter   My question is, is there a policy against doing this? Should we, as a community, accept and encourage such answers? Personally, I think the whole question should be deleted, as it is far from useful, but that's not the point here.  Generally speaking, I save my upvotes for answers which either helped me personally, or do an exceptional amount towards answering a question. I downvote a lot, as I have high standards (that's not to say that I'm perfect, however).  The bottom line is this: should I be more conservative with my downvoting patterns?
58397
I asked a  recently, looking for examples of an online tool. Per the , I answered my own question with a few examples that I had already found. I did this so that these examples would be included in the answers, along with the rest.  The question has received only down votes and insults saying that this shouldn't be done.   Should I not answer my own questions?
56792
Sometimes you give an answer to a question where:   You know it is the right answer You know it resolves OP's problems There's no answer "better" than yours You have spent time and effort on it Other users like it with several upvotes   BUT  OP that asked the question does not accept it with the green checkmark.  What annoys me is not the mere -15 points on reputation because, as well said by Jeff, if the answer is a good answer, the community will upvote it. I would like to get the green checkmark on pending questions for two main reason:   Personal satisfaction (what I answered, helped and worked for real!) Curiosity (Did it work? Cool, I can "close the case" and remember this solution)   Bonus reason: 3.  Good breeding (why not?)  I know that the system warns a user to accept an answer when he/she leaves questions without accepted answers after X days but, from the answerer's point of view, there's no way to put some "pressure" on who asked the question. Ok, I could ping the user with "Did it worked?", "have you tried?", "What about my solution?", "Still alive?" but imho that is not a good, official, effective option.  This feature fits well in these scenarios (thanks ccornet):  - The OP is new, unaware that answers can be accepted.  - The OP forgot about the question, and due to sort order in their profile, never saw it again.  My proposal: Having received X upvotes and after Y days, is it possible to have a "WAKE UP" feature where you can send a private predefined message to the OP who asked the question?    You could realize it in different flavors: 1. A voice recorded "WAKE UP" screamed when user logs in. 2. A red bloody "WAKE UP" message on users activity. 3. A blinking horse head near username.    Obviously, this is just a provocation. This feature could be implemented with a SOFT PRIVATE and absolutely PREDEFINED alert message.