Deleted questions

How often do questions with answers and comments get deleted? I don't mean double posts or spam or even questions no one has commented on or answered. I mean questions where effort has been put into answering them.

I don't search for my past answers all that often, but I find when I do, the questions are often deleted.

Answer 1

[Jan]

The current question ID is 32421 and the number of existing questions is 28586. It seems like 3835 questions have been deleted. The rate of 12% is higher than I expect.

[Daniel Shub]

Nice solution.

[Daniel Shub]

Following along this approach, the 1st non-deleted MATLAB answers question is: http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/16

and if you are wondering, yes, Walter did provide an answer.

[Nuchto]

Can the author of a question delete their own question? I can't.

[Walter Roberson]

The author can delete if there is no Answer to the Question.

[Jan]

@Nuchto: When you have a good reason to delete a question, e.g. an unexpected copyright infringement, ask one of the editors (> 3000 reputation points), or even better the admins, who you can reach by the "Contact us" link on the bottom of this page.

Answer 2

[Sean de Wolski]

Too often.

Answer 3

[Nuchto]

Can the author of a question delete it? I would like to delete some of my questions since they are silly.

[Daniel Shub]

You used to be able to, but not anymore. Which questions of yours would you want to delete? They all have answers and %80 have answers good enough that you accepted them. Remember when you delete a question you also delete the answers. I asked this question originally because it was frustrating to see my hardwork get deleted when somebody thought the question was silly.

[Walter Roberson]

You can use the Flag facility to mark a message and giving a reason for deletion.

[Jan]

I agree with Daniel: Deleting the answers frustrates their authors. So please do not delete questions.

If your claim is correct and the questions are really silly (I'm in doubt that this is the fact), remember what deleting them will cause: Another user with the same silly question will ask it again and again time is required to create an answer. But if such questions are kept in the forum, others will find it by the search function and they can profit from your question. So how could the questions be silly then?!

Especially beginner questions tend to be asked repeatedly. So you support the forum by not deleting them. Thanks.

Answer 4

[Fangjun Jiang]

Quite often for a frequent contributor. MATLAB Central team has had a plan to deal with this. Basically, it will no longer be possible to delete your own question once someone has answered it. It will also provide more visibility into when and why a question was deleted.

[Daniel Shub]

I hope they do it soon. Finding my answers deleted makes me not want to participate.

[Walter Roberson]

Daniel, a number of us find it frustrating as well.

Answer 5

[Dr. Seis]

Last time I noticed this, the person had deleted it inadvertently. Very frustrating. However, I am sure that there are some that might feel their problem is too easy and doesn't justify keeping around.

[Daniel Shub]

Accidentally deleting it is really bad. The edit and delete buttons are close together. As for the simple questions, I am not sure I would go searching for them again and probably wouldn't notice.

[Walter Roberson]

Deleting requires confirmation, so "accidentally" deleting seems unlikely to me.

[Dr. Seis]

This is the "sequel" to the post I was referring to:

http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/19686-sequel-of-a-specified-region