5

I saw a question about an hour ago, it looked reasonable. It was about passing an array of values to a function. I answered it, it took 10 or 15 minutes, including making up some example code.

Half an hour later I go to check on whether I made any typos, but couldn't find any history of the question at all! Not even in the "moderator tools" list of deleted questions (ie. "recently deleted").


It wasn't listed in my "all actions":

Recent actions


I was starting to doubt my sanity at this point. I'm sure I answered it! I even have the code in my IDE:

class myClass {
  const int num_;
  const int * values_;

  public:

  // constructor
  myClass (const int num, const int * values) : num_ (num), values_ (values) { } 

  // other stuff here

  // demo
  void printThem ();
};  // end of class myClass

void myClass::printThem ()
  {
  for (int i = 0; i < num_; i++)
    Serial.println (values_ [i]);  
  } // end of myClass::printThem

const int NUMBER_OF_VALUES = 6;
const int myValues [NUMBER_OF_VALUES] = { 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77 };

// make an instance of the class with the wanted values
myClass foo (NUMBER_OF_VALUES, myValues);

void setup ()
  {
  Serial.begin (115200);
  Serial.println ();

  foo.printThem ();
  }  // end of setup

void loop ()
  {

  }  // end of loop

So, did I dream it? Did I answer a question that came to me in a vision?

I couldn't find any trace of it, until I remembered the browser history:

Question in my browser history

There it was! The question did exist. Clicking on that link in the browser history revealed the question:

Question, now deleted


And my answer:

Answer to question

Now I'm pretty pissed off. I've seen this sort of behaviour before on other sites, but I thought StackExchange was supposed to be a knowledge base of good questions and good answers. Not to get an answer and then delete the question and the answer.


So what's my question?

  • Is this acceptable behaviour?
  • How do you deal with people that ask a question, wait for you to answer it, and then delete the question?
  • Why is the answer not listed in "all actions"? I did an action. I answered a question. I expect that to be listed.
  • How can they even delete the answer as well? On the Arduino forum, if you delete your question the answer still stays there, and then a moderator tells the person not to do that again.

Moderators: Please undelete the question, undelete the answer, protect the question from further deletion, and have a word with the OP.

3
  • Another example of OPs vandalising their own questions, [nRF24L01+ Arduino mpu6050 [closed]](arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/10583/…) Aug 7, 2015 at 7:30
  • I recently had this happen to me after I had spent a good bit of time trying to write a quality answer that should have been helpful to other users with the same question in the future: arduino.stackexchange.com/q/43345. After finding that my answer solved their problem, the author deleted the question. This is the sort of behavior I have come to expect from the average Arduino beginner but the sad thing is that the user who did this is rated in the "top 2%" of Arduino Stack Exchange users.
    – per1234
    Aug 16, 2017 at 0:04
  • 1
    I have undeleted that question. I can't see a valid reason for deleting it.
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Aug 16, 2017 at 2:12

1 Answer 1

7

Is this acceptable behaviour?

Yes and no. If there was a reason for deletion, it may be OK. However, there doesn't seem to be any reason the OP would delete. Otherwise, I'd say no. It's really dependent on the situation.

How do you deal with people that ask a question, wait for you to answer it, and then delete the question?

Flag it for moderator attention.

Why is the answer not listed in "all actions"? I did an action. I answered a question. I expect that to be listed.

Deleted posts aren't listed in that section.

How can they even delete the answer as well? On the Arduino forum, if you delete your question the answer still stays there, and then a moderator tells the person not to do that again.

We're not the Arduino forum, so there's that.

The OP can delete a question if it has only one answer with no upvotes (in this case they could delete)


For now, I've undeleted the question/answer and left a comment to ensure that there isn't some lingering reason the OP wants the question deleted.

1
  • 2
    Thanks for that, however the fact that I had to hunt down the link in my browser history shows it would be easy to "get away with" asking a question, getting a good answer, and then deleting both the question and the answer. The rule that he can delete a question if it has only one answer with no upvotes lets him get away with this concept of treating StackExchange as a method of getting free, private consulting. I suggest there should be a time interval before he can do this - so other people can at least view the question/answer and perhaps upvote the answer.
    – Nick Gammon Mod
    Aug 4, 2015 at 20:31

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