I actually don't mind the harshness, just the confusion of trying to figure out why the question disappeared without a trace. Closing it seems to be the appropriate moderator action in this situation. If questions are going to be spontaneously deleted, there needs to be some way for a deleted question's author to be notified that it has been deleted, including a note that indicates why the deletion was done, similar to the close reasons we have. Otherwise, people are going to continue asking bad questions. We want to encourage them to modify their behavior and start asking good questions.