0

Why is it possible to delete an answer when an edit is pending?

I had a question that included a HORRIBLE answer.

It was someone trying to get me to install malware but I had just edited it to include a note to the mods that I wanted to leave it up as an example, and added a warning to people to only download Microsoft security tools from the official site.

Before my edit was approved (possibly before my edit was seen) the answer was deleted.

Why is this allowed to happen? That seems like a bug to me.

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
5

Being able to delete a post that should not be there in the first place trumps any suggested edit waiting on it.

In this case, it was purely a malicious spam link, and while your signpost may have been in good spirits, there was no reason to have that answer remain on the site.

4
  • 3
    As an addition to what Random said above, it's also not recommended to remove links from spam posts because that makes it difficult to track spam patterns. I can understand why you handled the situation the way you did, but if content is not an answer (or worse if it's actively malicious) then it should be deleted.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 3:17
  • @nhinkle I didn't remove it - someone else did (if you look in comments to the deleted answer -if you can- you'll see that)... Random, I know it doesn't seem as if there was a reason to leave the answer there... it's just that no one ever gets to see something like that unless it's when they get infected by it and I just felt that something like that should be viewable somewhere on the internet without having to be infected first... I know it's policy to remove non-answers, I just figured maybe in some cases it might be useful to keep some of them to protect users that have the same question
    – krazykat1980
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 3:43
  • oh, and I still think edits should have to be reviewed before deletion - in case the edit fixes the reason for deletion... there was actually a post about something similar in meta on the wordpress SE... and that one was a valid edit which fixed the answer... when deleting posts there should be a popup notifying about pending edits (I'm just assuming there isn't since I can't delete yet)
    – krazykat1980
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 3:46
  • 2
    @krazykat1980 in this case, the post wasn't even deleted by a moderator. It was automatically deleted from receiving spam flags, which is an automatic process. Moderators are not required to review edits before deleting a post, but we usually do. I understand your reasoning for thinking it should have remained, and it's not a bad reason, but our policy is to remove spam regardless.
    – nhinkle Mod
    Commented Jan 19, 2013 at 4:29

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .