Deleted Upvoted and Popular Question: Why?

Question

The question is now Undeleted

_{I am very grateful to tchrist, who undeleted the post.
P.S. Several answers, consisting of one liners, have been deleted because they fail to reflect the site's standards that is expected today.}

Is there a word for someone who really has their act together?

I happened to remember this question and the many answers it received, and I wanted to find it again today. I needed a word or expression that fitted this description. Impossible. The question has been deleted.

Luckily I had posted an answer, so with a "search operator" that I discovered on SE Meta, I managed to track it down.

For users who do not have 10K the post is not be visible, so let me describe it briefly. The question attracted 68 upvotes and 1 downvote, and 32 answers were posted. The highest upvoted answer (+81 and -9) suggested hoopy and frood. The second and third answers earned 35 and 20 upvotes respectively. Out of 32 answers, only three earned 0 upvotes.

This is the question:

Is there a word for someone who really has their act together?

Someone who has their time well-managed, is focused, works out, has ambitions, eats right. Not necessarily success, but there's a kind of trait that leads to it, that I can't quite put my finger on.

There's strong overlap with people who are competitive or are overachievers, but it's not exactly the same thing. "In the zone" is close, but I'm looking for a more long term or permanent kind of thing — the opposite of a slob or slacker.

Maybe there isn't a word, but there should be.

The post was closed by a mod for being "too broad" in August 2013, two years later it was deleted singlehandedly by a different mod. I don't want to name names, besides their names are visible to 10K users, and I'm pretty sure there must be a rational explanation for the deletion.

SE dictates that an answer or a question deleted by a mod, can only be undone by another mod. So casting a vote to undelete the question above will resolve nothing.

• I understand that the question was too broad, that kinda makes sense, but I disagree with its deletion. I would like to know what the SE policy and criteria for deleting questions is, especially posts which have been upvoted and received numerous answers.

• Why was this question deleted–no reason was provided–and is it possible to undelete it in the not too distant future?

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CLARIFICATION

This needs to be stressed; the question was closed by one mod, not by voting. The question was deleted by a different mod, not by voting.

The Help Centre page says:

Moderators can delete any question, and users with sufficient reputation can cast delete votes on closed questions.

It fails to mention that users cannot cast their votes to undelete a question previously deleted by a mod. If the question closed is “extremely off-topic” (e.g. proofreading), has attracted more downvotes than upvotes, has no answers or answers which have no upvotes, then THOSE are the very questions which should be deleted by the mod team. But a question with 68 upvotes and 32 answers? Can we not agree it is not the same as a wall of text asking users to proofread it? The request is in a completely different league. This is not your typical low-quality question.

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How many closed questions are there on EL&U?

Currently, there are 22,208 closed questions. According to the canonical SE Meta post unearthed by tchrist♦ (specific information which is sadly missing from the Help Center) we learn the following:

Therefore, you should generally view a closed question as one that has been nominated for deletion. If you think there's a good reason for it to stick around, say something.

This is me saying something. This is me asking why a mod deleted a popular and useful question without explanation. Was it unintentional? And finally, can this decision be reversed today?

_{Please upvote this post if you believe the aforementioned question should be undeleted. Thank you. UPDATE: Currently there are three users who have cast their undelete votes. The question cannot be undeleted by non-moderators, but heartened, I too have cast my vote to undelete. Every little bit helps...}

Answer 1

Based on advice from the help center on question deletion, as well as from these SE Meta discussions...

• How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion?

• When should I vote to delete a question

...it seems well-established that a closed question "that cannot be improved and reopened" and has been inactive for a long period of time should be deleted.

So it seems to me that the most relevant question is whether this question ought to be closed when many other single-word-requests that appear equally broad and have more than one possible answer seem to survive.

Some examples might be these:

• What term means “one who enjoys learning”? (9 answers)

• Word for “only caring about oneself ” (14 answers)

• What's a word for avoiding a question with a generic (fake) answer? (17 aswers)

These three examples were easily selected by random trial and error, and I have a hard time seeing what makes them less "broad" than the question referenced by the OP. All three appear to me to have zero close votes and are protected with many "guessing-game" style answers.

I would propose that EL&U might not be adhering to a strict standard for closure on single-word-requests. Should more be closed, or should less? Should the one being discussed here be undeleted and nominated for reopening? Those are questions the community (and moderators) should stick to a consistent standard on, for the sake of fairness to all questions.

Answer 2

What’s the policy on deleting closed questions?

Closed questions should ultimately be either deleted or else fixed up so they can be reöpened. The one referenced in this question simply went the former route: deleted two years after closure. Here’s another example of one of those. And also this one.

All three of these accord with the guideline that closed questions should in the long run end up being deleted from the site. Upvotes are not a solid criterion for non-deletion. We have around 35k deleted questions as of this writing, very many of them with upvotes. Most should stay that way; sometimes some of them should not, so it’s a valid question to raise here.

The question is still whether it should stay deleted and closed — and given that it’s closed, why shouldn’t it be deleted?

While there can always be exceptions, Stack Exchange has actually provided some general guidance for these situations. Over on Meta Stack Exchange, there’s a canonical answer to this provided by one of our august Community Managers:

Do closed questions get deleted automatically after some time?

If there's no activity, questions with a score <=0 can be deleted automatically after a (fairly generous) period of time.

Also, once closed, users with >= 10K reputation points can vote to delete it after 48 hours, and users with 20K can vote to delete immediately.... Moderators can and sometimes will delete questions at any time - closed questions are often deleted on sight as part of a cleanup effort.

Therefore, you should generally view a closed question as one that has been nominated for deletion. If you think there's a good reason for it to stick around, say something.

So our guidance from the Powers That Be is that you should generally view a closed question as one that has been nominated for deletion. Let’s keep that in mind.

QED?

To make an argument for undeletion, one must argue that the referenced deleted post really is the kind of question that adds to our growing library of expert answers on our “site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts”.

That argument has not been made — quite possibly for good reason. In any event, it remains to be demonstrated. If that attempt is made, one would do well to consider these points:

• Why would we wish a closed question undeleted if we still intend to leave it closed?

• Before someone raises the possibility of a lock, we don’t much care for historical locks and this question does not seem to merit one.

• It’s marked Community Wiki, so it’s not like anyone’s rep would be affected were it to be undeleted.

• It has 32 answers, which are all over the map.

• Its quondam protection did little to stem the tide of random answers.

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_{Perhaps if there were eventually a Stack Exchange site whose raison d’être were to create a home for these sorts of English-language guessing games and requests for writing advice — call it EnglishRequests.StackExchange, shall we? — then we could entertain the notion of someday sending it thither. Yet even new sites deserve to create their own community standards about what is and what is not on-topic there. (And even if we wished to, it would take an employee to migrate it because it’s far too old, and I’m nearly certain they would decline the request.)}