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A few minutes ago I noticed the mysterious disappearance of 65 reputation from my Server Fault account. On looking into it, I found that this question, which I'd answered last month, had been deleted. Strangely, though, it doesn't seem to have been deleted by a moderator or the community, but automatically deleted.

The question had previously been migrated from Stack Overflow to Server Fault, answered, accepted, then closed as off-topic by four community members and a moderator. (I don't agree, but my opinion only counts for so much...)

It's my understanding that closed questions would only be automatically deleted if they had a score of -1 or lower, no answers, and were not locked. Yet this question had a score of 1 and an accepted answer.

What happened to this question? Even if it is off-topic, I believe it has some value and should not have been deleted.

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  • What might have happened here is that the question was automatically culled as a rejected migration. Since your question originated in Stack Overflow, when closed here it was automatically locked and the migration rejected, at which point the Stack Overflow version of it would be shown as closed as off topic (you'd have to dig in it's history to find out that it was once migrated). Rejected migrations do get automatically deleted at some point (I think after a month), but I'm uncertain on whether they get deleted when they've got answers at the target site.
    – user112504
    Commented Oct 6, 2012 at 22:38
  • What I'd like is some way to be notified when this sort of thing happens, so I can go vote to reopen the questions, but that's another question...
    – Michael Hampton
    Commented Oct 6, 2012 at 22:40
  • @MichaelHampton Lucky for you, as an auto-deletion(?) it can't be reopened by voting anyway. Huzzah! Or something.
    – HopelessN00b
    Commented Oct 6, 2012 at 22:42
  • There was a feature request on MSO asking for notifications when a question of yours is closed, but if I remember correctly it was declined. Can't find the post right now, I vaguely remember it was fairly old, this might be worth bringing up again. But look for that feature request, or related ones, before you post your own.
    – user112504
    Commented Oct 6, 2012 at 22:42
  • 2
    Why was this sent to m.sf??? We can't answer "why"
    – Mark Henderson Mod
    Commented Oct 6, 2012 at 22:52
  • 1
    @MarkHenderson Well, we (the SE team) monitor all metas, so we can still answer. If we miss something, please ping one of us in the Teacher's Lounge. And since this is about something that happened here on Server Fault, it makes sense that the question's asked here. I don't necessarily agree with migrating it off of MSO, but please don't just migrate back. Close and reject the migration in the future. Multiple migrations of the same question are problematic all over the place. (This one created a second copy of the question on MSO.)
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Oct 7, 2012 at 3:51
  • 1
    With all that said, I'm keeping the question here. If someone else on SF has a similar issue, they don't necessarily have to know about MSO to get an answer.
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Oct 7, 2012 at 3:53

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Looks like Yannis is right: when the question was closed, it triggered the migration rejection mechanism. The Server Fault version was then deleted since it was considered a rejected migration.

What you hit here is a bit of an edge case. In most situations, a migration is rejected before it picks up an answer and stays open for a whole month on the destination site. The idea behind rejecting a migration is that the question doesn't belong on the destination site and therefore should be deleted.

Since there is some disagreement here over whether or not it belongs, I restored the Server Fault version. It is still closed, so if you disagree with the closure, feel free to vote to reopen. If anyone thinks it doesn't belong here, they should vote to delete again... or leave it alone, depending on how strongly they feel about it.

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  • 1
    I'm always right. <ducks>
    – user112504
    Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 2:02
  • @YannisRizos Challenge accepted...
    – Adam Lear StaffMod
    Commented Oct 8, 2012 at 2:03

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