Can (and should) duplicate questions be automatically deleted? Yesterday a question of mine on EL&amp;U, , which had been closed as a duplicate,  was deleted automatically by the system.      deleted by Community♦ 10 hours ago (RemoveDeadQuestions)   The weird thing is, the post had been edited because I wanted to reopen it. As no answers had been posted, no answers were at risk of invalidation. I decided to broaden the scope of the question and for the sake of clarity, the title was changed. I also clearly defined where the original post ended and where the new edit began. Unfortunately, the question wasn't reopened, and it earned a further downvote. The score currently stands at -1 (+3 and -4)  I was prepared to edit it further because I rather liked the question, and thought it deserved a second chance but now I have to wait for three users on EL&amp;U to cast their votes to undelete it. Well that's never going to happen, mainly because no answers were posted and the (popularity) score is low.   The  about deleted posts, states        The system will automatically delete closed, unlocked questions with zero or negative score having no positively scored or accepted answers or pending reopen votes, that were closed for any reason other than duplicate nine or more days ago and haven't been edited in the past nine days.       EDIT      It's been brought to my attention that the relevant FAQ entry that concerns my case is #9. The system is also known as the         The system will automatically delete negatively-scored, unlocked, and unanswered questions that are older than 30 days. (RemoveDeadQuestions)      First and foremost, my question was 14 months old. Second, it was closed during the entire period, so it would have been impossible for anyone to have posted an answer. Third, there is no mention above that these include closed or duplicate questions. I had always been under the impression that duplicate questions were exempt from deletion. I now know they're not, unless one or more answers have been posted or if the question has a positive score.     UPDATE (June 2019) Just to make it clear I had read the FAQ quite carefully. It was not mentioned anywhere in the aforementioned FAQ that deletion also applied to duplicates. But soon after, #9 was revised    It now reads        The system will  negatively-scored, unlocked, and unanswered questions (both open and closed, including as duplicates) that are older than 30 days. (RemoveDeadQuestions)        To recap, about 14 months ago a post of mine was closed as a duplicate. Yesterday, I edited the question  and about 12 hours later the question was automatically deleted by the system  Why did the deletion happen? In the past, I have had other questions closed as duplicates but they were (as far as I know) never deleted by the system.   I think this is a bug, am I right?    2nd UPDATE (June 2019) For users who find themselves in the same predicament, members of EL&amp;U kindly resurrected the , it then received three answers, and it now has a positive score of +5. The question remains open to this day.
How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion? What circumstances can cause a question or answer to be deleted, and what does that actually mean?    How can a post be deleted? When can't I delete my own post? Can I still see my post even after it's deleted? Can I see a list of my deleted posts? How can I undelete one of my posts? What does deletion mean for a post? How do votes to delete work? What are the criteria for deletion? What else should I know about deleted posts? If I flag my question with a request to delete it, what will happen?       For more information, see the articles about  and  in the .
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But my question is, has it ever been experimentally validated?  I think it would not be a trivial experiment, because electromagnetic effects have to be eliminated, so neutral particles would be needed. Maybe diamagnetically trapped antihidrogen atoms could be examined as to which direction they fall? Would it be wrong to copy-paste questions from Quora? Now, I know that it's (relatively) easy to calculate, say, $r^{a+bi}$ (using the fact that, for  $z_1, z_2\in \mathbb{C}, {z_1}^{z_2}=e^{z_2\ln(z_1)}$ and $\ln(z_1$) can just be found using: $\ln(a+bi)=\ln[\sqrt{a^2+b^2}]+i \cdot \arctan(\frac{b}{a})$  ).  Anyway, how would I go about calculating, say, $i^j, k^i$ etc., or, more generally, $(a_1+b_1i+c_1j+d_1k)^{a_2+b_2i+c_2j+d_2k}$  (I know that exponentiating a complex number (to another non-real complex number) produces a non-unique result, so I assume the same would apply further up the hypercomplex ladder; if that's the case, I'm only concerned with the 'principal' value)?  I obviously don't want a general formula or anything like that; just some intuition and a method by which I could calculate such a thing.  And, finally (because I really like to push my luck), can this method for quaternions be extended to higher number systems (i.e. $\mathbb{O, S},$ etc.) to give an analogous result?   Thanks Unable to install any updates through update manager/apt-get upgrade You should choose your Display Name when signing up When a user signs up , their username is something along the lines of "user########"  Granted, in the welcome email it does say something along the lines of "Head over to your user account page to chose a display name!", however only a few people actually read that email.  I'm not saying we should restrict people from changing their display name again in the future - Everyone would still be able to do so. It's just that when you sign up you choose an initial display name that will be what your first display name is instead of "user########".