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I am coming from this question:

https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/423808/xelatex-plus-sign-undefined/423814#423814

That deleted in minutes after answered and without a specific reason.

My problem is not the possible votes or something, but the right of the OP to delete the question in minutes if already answered.

For example, I could give a nice answer with my material (lets say copyrighted).. and the OP could just delete it and make my answer a proprietary software... And some days after I could not even find my answer in my profile. (need more than 10K point as I read).

So, the feature request, is to need at least a moderation attention for a OP to delete an answered question and in any case the member who wrote the answer has to be notified (Could not even imagine that doesn't even get a notification about his lost answer).

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  • 1
    AFAIK accepted answers can't be deleted either. So it would make sense that questions with answers should not be deletable. (EDIT: Seems like one can't delete questions with up-voted answers: meta.stackexchange.com/q/42265, seems a bit unfortunate that one can delete a question and with it an answer before it could get upvotes ...)
    – moewe
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:44
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    @moewe Questions with an upvoted (but not accepted) answer cannot be deleted either (as far as I know)
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:46
  • @samcarter Yup, right, thanks. I found that out a few seconds after I commented.
    – moewe
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:47
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    @koleygr I also hate it when this happens. My workaround: If I think that my answer will be useful for future users of this site, ask a new questions and provide a self answer to preserve your answer.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:49
  • 1
    @koleygr With enough reputation one can also vote to undelete the question, but I have yet to see a case where this will work unless one begs in chat for other users to also vote.
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:51
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    @samcarter, thanks... It is a solution, but the bigger problem is that I found out just by luck that the question deleted... (And I have at least 70-80 answers with no votes at all -but didn't search to find which of them have only my answer-)
    – koleygr
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:53
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    @koleygr I agree that this does not solve the problem, that's why I called it "workaround". I think one should at least be notified if an answer of oneself is deleted!
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:56
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    @samcarter I am editing to add this in my "request"
    – koleygr
    Mar 29, 2018 at 11:57
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    @ChristianHupfer And there are users who don't have 0-votes answers any more :)
    – samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyz
    Mar 29, 2018 at 14:19
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    @koleygr: The question is undeleted and your post voted for -- only moderators can delete it now (or you in case you want to delete your post)
    – user31729
    Mar 29, 2018 at 14:51
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    @koleygr: I fear this is a general SE feature, nothing that can be changed on TeX.SE alone.
    – user31729
    Mar 29, 2018 at 17:31
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    @ChristianHupfer, this particular part of SE, is one of the most useful of all SE communities. More and more people are getting familiar with TeX (and friends) and this will continue grawing because it have no alternatives in (real) automating teaching material and whatever documents... So: Why can't we ask from SE to respect that request. It is not about the specific answer (that I would not even upvote or even read).. It is about some real simple removal of a non-reasonable "right". Let's start a thread and forward it to other sites too (like stackoverflow or wherever would be reasonable)
    – koleygr
    Mar 29, 2018 at 19:01
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    @koleygr: See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/155933/… -- it has been discussed on Meta.SE before (a 'long' time ago)
    – user31729
    Mar 29, 2018 at 19:55
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    @koleygr: Your example seems to mention that the OP would take your answer and make money with it, without visible proof that it "belongs to you." Anything posted on the Stack Exchange is covered by CC by-SA 3.0 and requires attribution. If it's deleted, it will still be available in SEDE, so it still forms part of the network, even though it's not visible to all members (10K users can see it). Even if someone were to ask something here and get an answer, they can still make proprietary software if they want..
    – Werner Mod
    Mar 30, 2018 at 0:11
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    ...they just have to attribute your contribution in their works. Regardless, if you don't want people to "take your stuff an possibly make money off of it", then the Internet is definitely not a place to post stuff. What you post here (or anywhere) is difficult to undo.
    – Werner Mod
    Mar 30, 2018 at 0:11

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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Rather than asking the system for protection, you might relax your expectations from answering a question.

Lately I don't have access to a working TeX installation, hence I'm trying to answer things using overleaf (emphasis on trying). People usually beat me to it.

Hence, my typical answering effort goes like this:

  1. "Hey, I can answer this one"
  2. Opens a tab, mumbles some TeX gibberish
  3. tries...waits... tries...waits... ("ha it works!")
  4. copy/pastes and makes a code block but the page suddenly shifts down a bit
  5. Scroll up to see "Click to see new answer"
  6. Swear a few seconds. Carry on.
  7. Go to 1.

You can replace the 5th item with anything else: OP did this, OP said this, user did that etc. It doesn't matter, if you are seeing each answer as an effort to be rewarded with something (badges, points, praise or else), probably you are doing it for the wrong reason.

Especially if you have proprietary material (or open source that you feel sentimental about) you should stop answering questions using them on these sites and point to the repository or to the pricing pages.

No offense to Overleaf! It is not designed for answering TeX-SX questions :)

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    The idea of sharing a solution (generally) to a programming problem on a public domain and without any price or whatever (external) reward, makes sense only in case that our own solutions (and code in general), can be used later by us without leaving to the one that made the question the opportunity to copyright or patent our answers himself and use them against us (without letting us to use as we would like). All of us have feel what you describing (I suppose) and much more... I thought I had make clear the point of the question.
    – koleygr
    Apr 2, 2018 at 14:10
  • @koleygr That assumes that the answer you wrote is the only copy which is hardly ever the case.
    – percusse
    Apr 2, 2018 at 16:48

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