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I noticed that the second question ever asked on Stack Overflow was deleted a few months ago.

I'm curious as to why.

I don't see anything about it to make it worthy of moderator deletion.

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    After ten-plus years and only 38,000 views, one could argue that nothing of value was really lost here, but there's nothing in the question itself that I could see justifying it's deletion. Maybe a historical lock, but deletion seems like a nuclear option.
    – Makoto
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 17:00
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    @Makoto - one could argue that if one wanted to. But 38,000 views isn't too shabby and I would hope that there was some expected benefit from deleting it that can be explained. After all an automated process could simply delete old questions with less than stratospheric view count if that is an actual site policy
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 17:07
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    Why we need to unearth question #2?
    – Braiam
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 17:17
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    @Braiam - the question here is what was the reason/policy behind putting it under the earth in the first place?
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 17:43
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    @Braiam You need a reason to delete content, not a reason not to delete it. Its ID is not really relevant.
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 18:21
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    @ayhan - maybe. But the question had survived on its merits for 10 years without anyone caring whether "Eggs McLaren" is a real person or not and yielded some highly voted answers.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 18:42
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    @Machavity the "your" and "mine" are incorrect. I didnt ask the original Q but your revised title indicated I did.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 19:17
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    @Braiam it's not about throwing away your stuff. Telling other people that they don't need their stuff is... bold.
    – artem
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 19:50
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    What exactly is so compelling about this question that it needs to be saved? At first glance, it appears to be a routine question about casting and why VB seems to be a bit smarter than C# in this particular scenario. Not completely uninteresting, but not exactly earth-shattering either.
    – Robert Harvey Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 19:57
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    @RobertHarvey So you are saying a moderator deleted it because they didn't find it interesting enough? I am asking the reason for deletion.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 19:59
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    @RobertHarvey That's what I get out of your first comment as well.
    – jhpratt
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 20:03
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    @RobertHarvey I thought the consensus was to focus on new stuff with active moderation. Plenty of new active posts that are even less earth-shattering then the question currently under discussion? Or it must have been flagged for the upteenth time that the mod-team got sick of it and to reduce workload, deleted it.
    – rene
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 20:04
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    Hm, well there are, in actual fact, seventy-nine flags on the question alone. Is the weight of that level of moderation justified by the question's content?
    – Robert Harvey Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 20:10
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    I didn't say it was a reason. I simply stated a fact. Don't try to read the mind of a moderator, if you value your own sanity. :)
    – Robert Harvey Mod
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 20:16
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    I deleted it and I'm tracing back why. when I figure it out, I'll post an answer. In the meantime, I've undeleted it
    – user3956566
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 22:08

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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I deleted it while there was a burnination, using a (now defunct) user script for mass deletions. There was a flaw in the script meaning some questions not visible on the page were also being deleted. I've undeleted it.

It happened around the same time as this during the burnination The [code-review] tag has been burninated.

I'm sorry about this. We don't use the script any more. My main concern is that there's not other questions unnecessarily deleted. Please raise mod flags or ask here if you find any.

Shog has created a post to review high upvoted deleted questions. Deleted question audit 2018

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    @MartinSmith it took some sleuthing into when I was using a particular user script. I'm really glad you found it. What a mistake. Trying to fix it is like looking at needles in a haystack. So I'll ask Shog if he can run a query on high upvoted posts deleted that month.
    – user3956566
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 22:19
  • Thanks, I could do an SEDE query using the deleted posts table but that would still require visiting all the ids manually to see the questions and who deleted them. I imagine it should be easier for Shog to find candidates.
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 22:23
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    @MartinSmith I'm pretty sure they're limited to a small period in Oct. I could ask Sam (he wrote the script and would prob have a record of it). Can we query deleted posts?
    – user3956566
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 22:31
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    Yes - e.g. data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/957449 - that question was the only one deleted around that time and with a high score and that hadn't already been closed
    – Martin Smith
    Commented Jan 1, 2019 at 22:46

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