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I witness a user, called "learner123", posting similar questions on Stackoverflow and ProofAssistants Stackexchange, then suddenly all his questions are "voluntarily removed". See:

  1. How to define a counting function with fold in Coq? – stackoverflow.com
  2. How to prove that in Coq that [split] and [combine] are inverses? – stackoverflow.com
  3. How to prove in Coq that [split] and [combine] are inverses? – stackoverflow.com
  4. How to prove that [split] and [combine] are inverses in Coq? – proofassistants.stackexchange.com
  5. How to prove in Coq these 2 theorems with [count_fold]? – proofassistants.stackexchange.com

(Notes: These URLs can be obtained here.)

I'm not sure whether the user has deleted his account or just his questions after getting an answer, because the questions are removed.

This is rude. It wastes people's time and means anyone with a similar question won't find the answer. I suspect the user is abusing the system for his homework problem, and is afraid of his professor to find out that he cheated.

I'm raising the issue hoping that people can come up with a way to curb this kind of behaviour. A simple solution is to simply disallow users to delete their own posts!

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    $\begingroup$ Agreed, thanks for finding these. I undeleted the question that had an answer. $\endgroup$
    – Couchy Mod
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 4:50
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    $\begingroup$ Maybe "disallow users to delete their own posts if they have already received answers and/or comments" ? $\endgroup$
    – Pierre Castéran
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 6:12
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    $\begingroup$ It's common to comment on bad questions to explain in which ways they are bad. Users then have a choice of updating them with improvements or deleting them. For that reason I don't think preventing people from deleting their own commented questions would be good. $\endgroup$
    – Ana Borges
    Commented Jun 15, 2022 at 7:58
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    $\begingroup$ Good idea! Then maybe "disallow users to delete their own posts if they have already received an answer"? Is it something enforceable by the mod? $\endgroup$
    – zacque
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 0:02

2 Answers 2

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Apparently it is not possible to delete your own question when it already received either multiple answers or at least one answer with at least one upvote (see the When can't I delete my own post? section of this answer). In fact, the list of restrictions seems to me to be crafted with your concerns in mind. A user who is trying to exploit SE in that way won't be able to delete their questions if they receive actual answers, with the exception of the case where they delete it right after they receive the first answer and it doesn't get a chance of getting any upvotes. I'm not sure we have enough evidence that is what's happening here, since as far as I understood only one of their questions was answered.

People can still abuse the system. For example, if you know that people (such as the Coq community in Zulip) receive a notification every time you ask a new question or edit the title of an old one, you can periodically do this in order to "spam" notifications. Since three of their questions have basically the same title and I can't read them now, that may have been what happened. Or they may simply not be aware of this system and have acted for other reasons.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for the link to how deleting works! Glad to learn about the list of restrictions, but they might not work very well for small/niche/specialised communities, where answers and upvotes come in days, not hours or minutes. $\endgroup$
    – zacque
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 0:06
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    $\begingroup$ "I'm not sure we have enough evidence" <--- That's one of the reason I'm raising the issue. Is there a way to collect such data? For normal user, if the question is deleted, all is lost. So there is no way for a normal user to monitor, collect these data, and reach a conclusion. $\endgroup$
    – zacque
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 0:09
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    $\begingroup$ @zacque Only stackoverflow mods can see deleted answers there $\endgroup$
    – Couchy Mod
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 3:50
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    $\begingroup$ @Couchy I see, thanks! $\endgroup$
    – zacque
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 4:55
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I undeleted the post How to prove in Coq these 2 theorems with [count_fold]?, which already had a well written answer.

Deleting useful content could be considered vandalism. However, the user has the right to disassociate their user profile from the post.

A related question on meta: Meta Stack Exchange When is it OK to vote to undelete posts that were deleted by their owners?

I don't think it is a good idea to simply disallow users to delete their own posts. There are situations where I feel this would be appropriate, for example if there are no answers, if the question is subjective or poorly written, or if the answers are short or trivial, among other reasons.

In this instance however I feel the user's multiple actions were inappropriate. As I recall, within a short period this user posted on stackoverflow (the post had multiple hints in an answer and comments), then cross-posted the exact question on PA, then deleted both. As far as I can tell, this user did the same thing again with a different question, and deleted the post shortly after getting an answer.

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    $\begingroup$ Thanks for undelete the post! I agree that sometimes it's appropriate for the users to delete their own posts. But the issue here is whether there is a way to prevent user from abusing that power/discretion, i.e. from deleting potentially useful content (useful from the community POV). $\endgroup$
    – zacque
    Commented Jun 16, 2022 at 0:32

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