I'm disappointed that a couple days ago I answered a reasonable question about git, only to have the user then delete the question instead up upvoting or accepting my answer.   I had responded to several follow-up questions and clarifications, and in that time no one else had participated at all. I invested a fair bit of time into that, and now I have nothing to show for it, and that knowledge is lost for everyone.   Why would a user do that? Is it wise to let questions and answers disappear like this?  Here was the link to the question at hand:
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Today I was looking at the question of this . The question was pretty simple, he was looking for the eval function in  not knowing of it's existence. He received a comment and while I was finishing reading the question, I saw him commenting      Thanks, eval() is what I was looking for.   and then he deleted his question. In my opinion, such behavior isn't appropriate. So, should I just ignore this or can I do something about it?
79095
I've been in the SO community a little over a month now - and having a great time!  As I grow into a contributing citizen of stackoverflow, i'd like to ensure that i'm being responsible with my answers.   I've answered a few questions, some without upvotes, some voted on and some accepted.  I feel that after a certain period of time, 0 vote answers are probably providing more clutter than value.  Apparently, nobody has found them useful, so they probably aren't (or are poorly written). Tonight I went through and deleted my answers with 0 upvotes where some answer was accepted.  That was an easy decision.   I left my 0 vote answers where nothing was accepted yet, well, because I think they could provide the information that the OP requested.  But at some point, I think my answers might just be cluttering the issue.  So my question to you is: How do you know when it's time to delete your 0 vote answers?  Or even 1 vote answers for that matter?
68111
Is there a way to delete a question after it's been answered, and the answer has an upvote?  Imagine that I have asked a question, that is later considered by me or the community as not useful and/or too specific. Or it gets a lot of downvotes for some reason. While it is not closed or flagged as a duplicate yet, someone could still answered it. Once answered, I cannot delete it any longer.  Is there a way to delete such question? Without having moderator privileges (to delete at will), is casting close votes the only way? I think I should have more control over the fate my own questions.  (On another example, I had a self-answered question where I was able to delete it only after unaccepting my own answer.)
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When I flag new user posts for "Not an answer" or "me too" type stuff, I usually write a comment to the user asking him to post a separate question  and don't pollute the universe bla bla.   Now I can see later - the post was deleted by a mod, but will the OP receive my comment if he logs in after a while - since the post is deleted.  Examples (I assume 10Ks can see the deleted posts - I'm not sure if these are the ones I commented on, but I flagged these for deletion)   or
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I have a situation where different users have asked questions and I answered them. The problem is not that they haven't accepted the answer which can tell me that it is correct or not. But they are actually not responsive and it seems to me that answer is being ignored. Or they asked the question just for the sake of asking.  See -the user was last seen yesterday, the same day it was answered.  -the user was last seen today.   which is also upvoted by a fellow user, but the OP is seen till days after it was answered and is not even commenting.  I went through a lot of question on meta on similar situation such as  where Anna says that it is completely voluntary for users to accept it.   But then again, I believe it is becoming a fashion, to ask a question read the answer as a suggestion and leave it.  It is discouraging me. I am not saying that my answers or suggestions are 100 percent working but I atleast need be told so I can improve it. And more importantly I am not the only one facing this.  Please advise.  EDIT : Well, I got a lot of suggestions from the answers and comments combined below and I have to say that I agree with what Cody Gray has to say and just keep on answering the questions, the returns(good or bad) may be now,later or never and just move on. However, in my own defence I would also say that I did not raised this question to pin point any user but a bad practice that I find worthy of discussing. Thanks.
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Possible Duplicate:          There is a weird scenario I came across, I that know if you earn reputation and the user deletes the question the reputation remains.  However on 22nd of June, I answered a question and it was accepted. Today I found out that the question was deleted along with the user (couldn't find the user or any of his questions) and the reputation I earned is also gone.  I know this is not the expected behavior, but can I get the my reputation points back?
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Could we have a method of explaining why we think a question or answer should be deleted?  It could work identically to closing a question, maybe with an additional text-input box (like the "Requires Moderator attention" flag option) to provide additional info because the reasons for deletion should really be more specific..  For example, "exact duplicate" doesn't explain to me the user has re-posted the same question, thus, it should definitely be deleted (not just left closed). Like with close-messages, these reasons would be listed under the deleted item (or answer).   I don't think comments are suitable, as they can be a pain to quickly.. "extract" deletion reasons from them - I have to scan through the comments, and they may all be irrelevant.  Equally, for un-deletion, it'd be useful to know why another user thinks a question should be restored. For example "new user deleted the question after they accepted an answer", or "Jeff went insane and started deleting any questions with the letter O in it".  I think requiring un-deletion reasons is possibly more important, since commenting is disabled on deleted questions - we have no way of explaining why we think it should be restored
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.
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I notice a really worrying trend of some really popular questions being closed and eventually deleted. Some of them became legends already, like this one  ? Yes, it does not fit the format ideally, but what is point of obeying the letter of the law to such extent that it becomes ridiculous? Ok, closing is fine if community leaders became so pedantic, but why go so far as to even delete it? At this point it looks like burning old pictures just because you don't like them.  Update: Summary  For now I heard only two clear arguments:   Those questions pollute search results.  Those questions don't play well with enforcing question and answer standards.   Both of that statements are easily verifiable and to my experience are just false.
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Why are the reputation points one gets for an answer deleted if the question was deleted? I mean, you made the effort of answering the question with valuable information, spending time for it, and then, just because the question wasn't as good as the answers, you lose reputation.  Seems very unfair to me. (I just lost about 100 points on Stack&nbsp;Overflow.)
96800
A user asks a question. It gets downvoted.(to oblivion) And then gets deleted by a mod.     This question should then be accessible to the user in the "deleted recent questions" link but this doesn't happen.    If a user has asked only one question (which gets deleted) then this link goes missing. Only after asking another question (which must not get deleted), is the user able to see that link.     Is this a bug or a new-user-restriction?
5343
Looks like there's a small bug in the UI: I posted a question here on meta.SE which ended up being just something dumb I was doing and no use to anyone in the future. At first I posted an answer saying what the dumb thing was, but then I realized that the whole thing had no value, so I deleted the answer, and then deleted the question — whereupon it asked me:  Delete this answered question? We do not recommend deleting questions with answers because doing so deprives future readers of this knowledge. Repeated deletion of answered questions can result in your account being blocked from asking. Are you sure you wish to delete?  (Screenshot below) Probably shouldn't ask (or add to the tally) if the only answers are deleted ones...
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There was  by  (no, another Jon) that had an incorrect accepted answer with 0 votes. I pointed out in the comments that the accepted answer is wrong and started writing my own answer (a workaround, but anyway!). As I finished my answer and pressed Post Your Answer, I realized the question has just been deleted. This kind of bugs me because I really wanted to share my solution. Should I:  repost the question; wait for someone to revert it if possible?  Update I reposted the question (along with my answer) .
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I made a mistake today.  I . (A C# question, no less. My head is truly hanging in shame.) Unfortunately, by the time this was pointed out, the answer had already been accepted.  Another answer has been posted which is correct. It has more votes than mine, and mine has some downvotes (still a balance of upvotes, but...) Unfortunately because the answer has been accepted, I can't delete my answer. I've edited it so that it's correct - it won't mislead anyone any more - but I'd far rather delete it to let the original correct one float to the top.  In this case I suspect it won't be a real problem - the question author is reasonably regular, so hopefully he'll transfer acceptance to another answer reasonably soon. However, I can easily foresee situations where this wouldn't happen.  Could I suggest that the author of the accepted answer should be able to delete it, if the answer has received some threshold of downvotes (e.g. 3)? Deleting the answer straight away would have been preferable to editing it to be correct, effectively duplicating the effort already put in by Luis Filipe in this case.  I understand the "we don't want to lose value" argument for not letting a question author delete their own question after it's had good answers, but if an answer has received downvotes (so at least some of the community think it's harmful) and the answer's author thinks it should be removed, I think that should override the questioner's choice.
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Sometimes I post a "good" answer to a question, but then it turns out I missed something.  Someone else comes along and points out my error/omission in a comment, and I change my answer.  My answer is now better, freshly active, and I get more upvotes.    However, I kind of feel that I owe that commenter a little bit of the credit (and therefore rep) for having helped support my answer.  I can upvote the comment, but there's no rep gain for that.  Is there any way I can give the commenter a portion of the rep I gain from further upvotes to what is now our answer?  I don't mind some approved existing solution, or some new totally manual solution, but it seems like it could be automated as well.  A similar question was asked in a comment to an answer here:    and one suggestion (which was not popular) was to find some other questions/answers by the helpful commenter and upvote them.  I'm kind of in agreement that each post should gain upvotes of its own accord, and besides, there may not be enough other posts by that user to fully compensate them for their assistance.
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I know a lot of people really want to get lots of SO rep points to improve their quality of life. I get it. When I read a question, I think about whether I know the answer or not. If yes, then I take the time to write up what I deem to be a reasonable answer. If not, then I think about whether or not I want to try to figure it out. If so, and if I do, then I repeat the "know the answer" step. I don't try to flash answer questions. I'm just not the type.  But what's bugging me lately is the copy cat answerer. I read a question. Think. Formulate an answer. Then answer. This takes at least a few minutes. Four times this week, about 5-10 minutes after I post my answer (which comes 10 or more minutes after the question is posted), someone else posts the exact same answer! Even the same code with the same variable names! That's annoying. I don't really know why it bugs me so much, but there you have it. I'm annoyed.   In my annoyance, I feel like voting the answer down. But technically it's a correct answer, so I shouldn't do that. Maybe I should leave a comment? Maybe I should let it go? Probably the latter. Then again, duplicate questions are closed, why not close duplicate answers? Any suggestions?
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I'm relatively new to Stack Overflow and already have experience with getting both a question and an answer deleted.  I understand why  was closed, but the closing happened too fast. The first time I looked at my question after posting it, it was already closed; I didn't get the chance to respond.  The deletion of  was done by mistake. The deleter wrote that I should have deleted the answer by myself to avoid bothering the moderators. That was offensive, IMO.  I suggest implementing a time period, e.g. one day, during which questions cannot be closed. That way, authors would have the chance to explain the causes of their answers.