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I think if the administrator wants to remove a question when the question is off-topic or for some other reason, could we add a status of hiding (I mean the post will be not seen by others) and not remove the post forcefully? And let the user delete or fix it himself. Is this better?

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The vast majority of questions aren't removed. They are simply closed. And even then, when questions are removed they are soft deleted, which means they can be seen and undeleted by high rep users. Also, your title says Strongly recommend not removing the post forcely and then you say remove the post forcely. Could you clarify what you're suggesting? –  Raghav Sood Feb 27 '13 at 3:30
    
When you say "not seen by others"- you mean that it can be seen only by the user? In that case, if he fixes it, who can see it to do anything about that? –  David Robinson Feb 27 '13 at 3:32
    
@DavidRobinson: Flag for mod attention if the post is fixed. –  nhahtdh Feb 27 '13 at 3:34
    
Sorry for mistyping it. please review it again. thanks. –  Joe.wang Feb 27 '13 at 3:34
    
@nhahtdh: That would put far too much work on the moderators, and it would make it harder, not easier, to reopen questions. As it stands now, any user with >3k votes can vote to reopen your question. If only mods can do it, that would create a huge backlog. Since you appear to be focused on questions that are deleted, note that questions that are deleted typically have either a) been closed and inactive for a long time, or b) were very inappropriate for the site and beyond saving. –  David Robinson Feb 27 '13 at 3:36
    
Hi , David, If he fixes it , he can post it again. and it can be reopened by administrator or high rep users. thanks. –  Joe.wang Feb 27 '13 at 3:37
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@Joe.wang: to be clear- you are referring to deleted questions? Letting posters undelete their own deleted questions is a very bad idea. Most of the time, when posts are deleted by people other than the asker, they were very poor questions. –  David Robinson Feb 27 '13 at 3:39
    
@DavidRobinson: When a closed question is edited, unless people are around, it won't get reopened (usually the person need to bring it up somewhere to gather attention). Deleted questions are mostly impossible to be recovered without mod's help, since only mod can track the question down (but as you say, deleted question are usually bad or useless, except for maybe self-deletion). –  nhahtdh Feb 27 '13 at 3:42
    
@nhahtdh It will actually show up in the reopen queue when it's a closed question. (Not a deleted one). –  Bart Feb 27 '13 at 3:43
    
@Bart: Will a question with 0 reopen vote show up in there? –  nhahtdh Feb 27 '13 at 3:43
    
@nhahtdh Hmm, good question. I'll have to look that one up to be certain. –  Bart Feb 27 '13 at 3:47
    
@Bart: The thing is, there are a large number of questions with reopen vote (as seen in 10k tool) not in the reopen queue (I see 0 post needs reviewing on the reopen queue). –  nhahtdh Feb 27 '13 at 3:49
    
There's something called a soft delete too where a post can be brought back by mods or 10k users. That's probably what happened. –  Linuxios Feb 27 '13 at 4:07
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What's with the "not constructive" votes on this? If you disagree with the suggestion, voting to close isn't really the way to go. –  Anna Lear Feb 27 '13 at 4:20
    
@AnnaLear: This should really be closed as a dupe of the deletion FAQ instead. Is it worth reopening just for a 'proper' re-close? –  Martijn Pieters Feb 27 '13 at 11:46

1 Answer 1

up vote 4 down vote accepted

This is sort of what happens now - every deleted post is still accessible by users over 10,000 reputation and can be restored if needed.

Deleted answers can still be edited by their author, but unfortunately deleted questions aren't visible to their authors unless they have 10,000 reputation. Requests to change that have so far gone unanswered, but personally I think we can/should fix that up.

In addition to that, we're currently working on some changes to the closing system that should allow for a more clear opportunity for the asker to fix their question if it was closed. No specific details on this exist yet as we're still defining exactly what we want to do, though there will likely be meta posts coming to solicit feedback and suggestions from the community here.

In the meantime, the current behaviour is by design and we won't be introducing "hidden" posts.

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