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Shouldn't be able to delete question after any response
This is in response to something that happened on the Math site, but it's really a Codidact-wide issue.
A week or two ago, someone posted a poorly written question. Not surprisingly, the question wasn't well received. However, I did write a few comments that pointed out confusions, asked for clarifications, and a little general feedback.
A day or two later, the question just vanished. It turns out the OP deleted it. That was a bit annoying because any record of what was said also vanished. I agree the question was probably headed for closure, but it's still important to keep such things around.
A few days ago, what appeared to be the exact same question was asked again. I wrote a comment about this being just like a question from a week or two earlier, and the OP said something to the effect "Yeah, maybe this time it will work better". I thought that was a bit rude, being abusive of the site and others' volunteer effort.
I repeated some of my issues from the previous time in comments. The question then vanished again. That's really irritating. Not only did I end up wasting my time twice, but the visible record of this user's activity is now incomplete.
I think it's important for others to see how this user has reacted in the past, whether that is on closed questions or not. It's also important to have a record of what are considered good and bad questions.
So the proposal is: User's can't delete their own questions after someone else has written a comment or answer to it. If a question is badly received, you need to fix it if you want an answer. You don't get to pretend the whole thing didn't happen, then try the same thing again later hoping for a different result.
It would be bad to prevent deleting questions by simply commenting on them, because the comments could point out why the …
7mo ago
The presence of an answer already blocks deletion (except by moderators, who can override this). Allowing the presence …
5mo ago
There are some good reasons to prevent question deletion when answers exist. There are users that believe the correct co …
7mo ago
3 answers
It would be bad to prevent deleting questions by simply commenting on them, because the comments could point out why the question actually can't be salvaged from OP's perspective. Currently, comments are the only way that ordinary users (without at least the "vote on holds" ability) can signal a real problem with a new question, so we should expect that bad questions will have comments on them that try to explain what needs to be fixed. If OP is not interested in fixing the question, there's no reason to keep it around.
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The presence of an answer already blocks deletion (except by moderators, who can override this). Allowing the presence of a comment to prevent deletion would be too easy to abuse, as pointed out in other answers. Moderators can recover comments, so in the event that there was something important in comments that couldn't have been in an answer instead, there is a way to get them back.
0 comment threads
There are some good reasons to prevent question deletion when answers exist. There are users that believe the correct course of action is to "clean up" their instance of communication on the site, by deleting their question, once they have received an answer. This is wrong, and the system should have measures in place to prevent this. Simply eternally preventing self-deletion once an answer exists, solves this problem.
Additionally, question deletion is a demotivating factor for an answerer. Answers are posted to help not just the author, but everyone that comes after. Time and effort is put into them, and it's discouraging to have your content involuntarily removed.
That said, preventing self-deletion is also an issue. There are cases in which the question author later comes to the realization that their question is of low quality, and should be removed. This is now impossible, if somebody made the bad decision of posting an answer to this question. I am not sure how much of an issue this is on Codidact, but it's a considerable problem on Stack Overflow. One of the things often encountered, is people that constantly answer obvious duplicates, or other low-quality contributions, many of them worthy of closure. I have been in this situation myself; years ago, I posted some bad questions on SO, as a beginner in the field of programming. I quickly received bad feedback, but was unable to clean up my mess, because several answers were already posted. There were also examples of questions where I came back a few years later, and tried several methods of getting them deleted. Still not having deletion votes, I had to ask in chat rooms for support; my requests either went unnoticed, or were banned (requests with self-involvement are prohibited in SOCVR, for instance). Most new users don't even know about these opportunities. Users need to have realistic and easy ways to clean up their own mess once they realize their own mistakes.
Preventing deletion due to comments, magnifies this problem significantly. Comments are not for answering, but for clarifications, critique, or other similar uses. For instance, pointing out how a question is off-topic, or guiding a user about the rules, are accepted uses. So preventing deletion due to comments is not a fine measure.
I think a possible solution to your issue, would be to let users view deleted posts that they have interacted with. That is however a suggestion in need of further scrutiny, and outside the scope of this answer.
Conclusion: preventing deletion due to comments? Absolutely not. Due to answers? Only if the user is still given appropriate and accessible ways to clean up their questions in the case that they are indeed inappropriate for the site, and the answers were posted in the wrong.
0 comment threads