How long before a closed question is deleted? or is it ever deleted?
2 Answers
From here (credit to Iain) :
If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...
- has -1 or lower score
- has no answers
- is not locked
... it will be automatically deleted.
If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...
- has a score of 0 or a score of 1 with a deleted owner
- has no answers
- is not locked
- has a viewcount <= the age of the question in days times 1.5
- has 1 or 0 comments
... it will be automatically deleted.
OR
It will be deleted if three users with the appropriate amount of rep vote to delete it.
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2Or if it is flagged for deletion and the mod handling the flag agrees.– user9517 ModCommented Feb 15, 2012 at 10:58
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Hmmm....would this be something additional to add to the FAQ?– mdpcCommented Feb 15, 2012 at 17:08
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@mdpc Might be worth considering as a network-wide additional page for the FAQ (not sure what I'd call it though)– voretaq7 ModCommented Feb 15, 2012 at 19:37
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I believe that last line about only requiring three votes is somewhat incorrect. e.g. That horrible question about favourite server names. When I cast my vote to delete I was informed that it would take something like another 210 votes for it to be deleted. At the time there weren't that many SF people with voting rights. Commented Feb 15, 2012 at 20:44
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@JohnGardeniers This is true. Questions with large amounts of votes need more delete votes. I believe 3 is the baseline for a "normal" closed question. You're definitely right that it's not always the case, though.– MDMarraCommented Feb 15, 2012 at 20:49
Further information
The question lifecycle http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/
and votes required to delete more popular questions
answered Feb 16, 2012 at 21:48
