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My question Modern politically correct English guide (10k only, screenshot below) was deleted. I am asking for help from the community here to understand why this question was deleted, and how I could have formulated it better. The question is visible only to me (and users with 10k reputation) so I am attaching a screenshot.

One of the comments I received was snarky without being helpful, in my opinion - it betrays an ignorance of goings-on around the world. For example, see this - https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/06/12/tech-industry-has-an-ugly-master-slave-problem/ for more information on why certain terminology is offensive. That is what the question was about.

enter image description here

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    Flag the post and ask for it to be undeleted. The question, as it appears to me, is borderline topic if you supply another example that some people consider politically incorrect, and ask the community for an inoffensive equivalent.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jun 21, 2020 at 8:52
  • Objective explanation: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master/… for the sake of impartiality, those who strongly oppose: techpowerup.com/forums/threads/…
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jun 21, 2020 at 9:11
  • I have asked for it to be undeleted long ago. I'll add another example to the question.
    – talonx
    Jun 24, 2020 at 5:34

1 Answer 1

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Your question was deleted by an automated process known as Roomba:

If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...

  • has −1 or lower score
  • has no answers
  • is not locked

...

... it will be automatically deleted.

This happens because

[a]bandoned, unanswered questions can be a nuisance for readers when they appear in search results. While every question deserves a chance to be answered, at some point the annoyance to those searching for a solution outweighs the increasingly-small chance that an answer will be provided.

Resource recommendations are not a very good fit for Stack Exchange sites; some sites explicitly declare them off-topic, on other sites they're closely as Opinion-based. On English Language & Usage, we have these kind of questions here on Meta; you could take a look at the various questions in the tag to see if your question has already been asked before, and if not, give it another try here.

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  • a) Could a moderator undelete the post? b) How could someone flag a sarky comment if the commenter is a moderator. P.S I know the answer to the second but I think the OP should be made aware.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Jun 21, 2020 at 8:56
  • @Mari-LouA a) yes, but if the Roomba script runs again, it will again delete the post b) if you don't trust the moderator not to impartially handle a flag on their own comment, ping another moderator in chat or post a question here on Meta.
    – Glorfindel
    Jun 21, 2020 at 9:06
  • Just because they are here on Meta doesn't mean they should be. Jun 22, 2020 at 7:37
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    An annotated list of references is here, english.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/2573/…, so you can get an idea of the kinds of references considered relevant to the site. You can search Amazon books and Google Ngram for titles you might find useful. However there’s a lot of slang involved, so books are easily outdated; most slang is short-lived.
    – Xanne
    Jun 23, 2020 at 0:28
  • I don't think I can flag a comment once the question is deleted.
    – talonx
    Jun 24, 2020 at 5:35
  • @Xanne - thank you. This is a very useful list.
    – talonx
    Jun 24, 2020 at 6:21

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