Have I been penalized for an answer 1 moderator didn't like?

Question

I posted an answer that met both the spirit of the question and the literal question asked. It was a lot different from other answers, all of which were going down a trail suggested by the OP as a possible answer to there question.

My answer was deleted by a mod, and I used the "contact moderator" button on the answer to request clarification. I believe the mod didn't really read/understand the original question, and just "shot from the hip" based on my new tack for solution. My e-mail is in my profile, but I never heard from a moderator by e-mail nor was there any reply in the comments.

So I waited a couple of days, wrote 2 paragraphs at the front of my answer explaining what the literal question was, and what the questionthe OP really wanted answered.

I re-posted my original answer (with the preface) and the moderators allowed it to stand.

From my point of view, the original moderator didn't have a leg to stand on when they deleted the original answer. If the answer was a bad answer worthy of deletion, then my re-post should also have been deleted. But, the identical answer wasn't deleted.

I'm also upset because I could not engage a moderator. Not one word came from them. The "flag for moderator attention" fell on deaf ears.

Now I find I can't comment on anything -- can't asked an OP specific questions, can't correct statements of fact in comments, can't offer leads for investigation.

I am also most reluctant to post an formal answer that doesn't directly and completely answer the question, i.e. an "answer" that just asks for more info, etc. -- Such a non-answer is a distraction which should be down-voted as non-responsive.

We have comments for questions and suggestions that are not "true answer" quality. I do wish that I were allowed to make them.

How can I get out of Coventry? As an occasional contributor, I expect it will be years before I produce enough original answers.

Answer 1

Based on your description, I'm guessing the answer that was deleted was this one, currently very similar to this existing one. Note, though, that at the time the post was deleted, it looked like this.

I admit I don't know Bash, but to me it looks like your answer only changes the stuff prepended to the output, as opposed to removing the spurious + echo line. Several other users (including one non-moderator 20K+ user) believed that the answer did not sufficiently address the question, so the moderator was certainly not alone.

Your edit to the original answer came after the deletion. Therefore, it's very unlikely that others noticed. When you reposted, though, you posted the new revised version that contains more information and better explanation. Given that the original answer was in the Low Quality Posts review queue, it was judged as low quality by either the automated heuristics or by a Not An Answer flag, which is probably what brought it to moderator attention. So far, it looks like the new answer has not received such a flag, though it could be argued that it still doesn't accomplish the task in the question.

I'm not sure how you could have raised a flag for a moderator here, since doing so requires 15 reputation. Given that this meta post was migrated from Meta Stack Overflow, you might have raised your flag on a different site. Flags should be virtually always only raised on the site where the issue is.

Note finally that moderators will probably never contact you via e-mail. If anything, you would get a private moderator message on the site, but that only happens when something seriously bad went down.

Relevant MSE: Why do I need 50 reputation to comment? What can I do instead?

Answer 2

TL;DR version: No, you have not been penalised at all, you just haven't earned any reputation on this site to allow you to comment.

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Bens answer does a good job of explaining why your answer was likely deleted. I was not the mod involved but seeing your original revision I agree with the action taken, you simply failed to explain how to achieve anything and as such your answer looks a lot more like a comment. Even it its edited state it fails to explain how to do what you are saying and instead just looks like a massively verbose comment.

There are no bans, limits or restrictions on your account.

The deleted answer had no upvotes (or downvotes) so you neither gained nor lost any privileges as a result of the answer being deleted. You didn't have the ability to comment before it was deleted and you still didn't have that ability after. You need to earn rep on each site before you can comment on questions and answers on that site.

We have the ability to contact users via on-site methods, but this is reserved for serious issues like spamming, plagiarism, being abusive and other more disruptive problems.

If you got no response from raising a flag then asking a question here on meta would be the next thing to do, or you could have asked a question in our Ask a Moderator chat room if you wanted a more casual discussion.

In all honesty your is of questionable quality as you still don't actually post anything that solves the problem. You get halfway to a solution with "a trick" which, while you describe it, you do not actually state how to do it and is hidden amongst a lot of rehashing of the question, making it difficult to pick out.

In essence the only useful line in your answer is

Do an assignment of a text string to an inactive variable. I use "echo" for my variable name because 1) it's a functional echo, and 2) the text can be retrieved at a later time for trace-backs, etc.

But you don't actually show or teach anyone how to do this and it makes it difficult to tell whether this is just more verbose verbiage or a real solution.