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On a question on SU, I noticed I lost 80 rep because a good question was deleted. Why do the good answerers suffer if a question gets deleted? Is the information not pertinent?

I think it is, and so did others. The leading answer when I last checked had about 12 up votes, so it wasn't a small question.

How do I find out which version of Windows 7 I need for my gaming machine?

I'm building my first computer and I have all the parts I need. The tower is pretty good as it will be costing about $1000.

All I need to know is what exactly is going to fit my needs fine as far as an operating system is concerned. If I can, I want to just get Windows 7 Home Premium and that would be fine. The type of gaming I plan on doing involves Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 (whenever that comes out…).

Is there anything I should take into account when choosing my operating system version?

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  • Any idea which question / answer it was? Even a title might help us find it back.
    – Tamara Wijsman
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 17:42
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    @TomWijsman The question in play is probably this one. FYI everyone <10k: It was posted on the 7th March, closed by the community as NARQ 18hrs later (close doesn't seem to have been contested), then deleted today - 57 days after posting.
    – DMA57361 Mod
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 17:50
  • Full question text, title in bold: "How do I find out which version of Windows 7 I need for my gaming machine? [closed] I'm building my first computer and I have all the parts I need. The tower is pretty good as it will be costing about $1000. All I need to know is what exactly is going to fit my needs fine as far as an operating system is concerned. If I can, I want to just get Windows 7 Home Premium and that would be fine. The type of gaming I plan on doing involves Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3 […]. Is there anything I should take into account when choosing my operating system version?"
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 18:52
  • 4
    It's just not a useful question. Besides being overly broad ("gaming") and vague ("$1000 hardware") and showing not a bit of research effort (games still have system requirements, right?), it's just too easy to answer, as evidenced by the ease of which most of the answers got 5-10 score by mostly not even posting anything relevant. This often means that almost everyone could have answered that. And mentioning the 16GB memory limit or Domains in answers to a question about a gaming machine? Have games that much in the last few years? Deleting the question was appropriate IMO.
    – Daniel Beck Mod
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 19:04
  • FWIW, I had tried to salvage the question but it was really borderline to begin with. Just not a good fit for the site. (/cc @daniel I amended the text to Luke's question)
    – slhck
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 20:30
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    It may not have been a small question or got some good rep for the people answering, but as a question it fails horribly to pass SU FAQ "Chatty, open-ended questions diminish the usefulness of our site and push other questions off the front page. Your questions should be reasonably scoped. If you can imagine an entire book that answers your question, you’re asking too much. If your motivation for asking the question is “I would like to participate in a discussion about ______”, then you should not be asking here." I support the deletion of such questions.
    – Mokubai Mod
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 20:44
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    I saw that there was good information there, but if it doesn't fit under the FAQ, I don't really got a good argument then
    – Canadian Luke
    Commented May 3, 2012 at 22:27

1 Answer 1

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This might not be a bug and might work as intended.

Before going further, you will want to read up with this blog post. The most important bits related to your question are these, from the bottom of the blog post:

First, if you’ve contributed something worthwhile to the site, you should keep the reputation for that even if it eventually gets deleted. “Worthwhile” here is defined as,

  1. A score of 3 or greater
  2. Visible on the site for at least 60 days

Your questions seems to say that your answer was at least under the first part of that definition.

But, you should first verify that that is indeed the case:

  1. Go to your reputation page

  2. Tick the show removed posts box at the bottom.

  3. Verify how you lost your reputation.

The second question is whether your post was on the site for at least two months.

As you are now aware of the recent changes, I'll try to attempt to answer your questions:

Why do the good answerers suffer if a question gets deleted?

I would think that it is very rare that answers would be really good when a question gets deleted, because that is when the question does not adhere to the What kind of questions should I not ask here? FAQ.

If a question is not answerable, chatty, open-ended, wrongly scoped, subjective or meta; then in any of these cases I can't see how it can result in answers that solve a problem or that we can learn from.

Feel free to proof me wrong with an example...

Is the information not pertinent?

Unless personal data needs to be removed or a DMCA complaint has been made, information is still in the system and visible to 10k users and moderators. When people disagree with the deletion of an answer but don't want the question to be open either, the recent changes allow moderators to historically lock the post. This is covered in the above blog post, to keep information pertinent when necessary...

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