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In July 23, I flagged five posts that were closed as duplicates, asking if a mod (or mods) could link them to different post. A post which, in my opinion, contained far better answers than the original "canonical" post . I've only noticed today (06 August 2015) that in August 2, three of these answers were completely deleted by one mod.

The questions closed as duplicates were perfectly legitimate, a few even had a couple of half-decent answers and around 1,500 views, but they have now been deleted. I feel terribly responsible for their deletions. I never cast a vote to close them, and I didn't mention the term "delete" in any of my five flags, I only asked the duplicates to be linked to a different question. Many duplicates are linked to two questions, and this was my hope. In retrospect, I could have worded my flag request better, but I couldn't think know how to say it. I should have said "substitute", maybe that would have been clearer.

In any case, is there a way for the three deleted posts to be undeleted? I have the earned privilege to see the deleted posts, one could copy and paste the entire page, couldn't they? It can't be too difficult a task. Is it too late? :(

I hesitate to add the links, I blame only myself for not making my request crystal clear. If I hadn't flagged the posts, none of this would have happened.

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  • Distracting comment thread was distracting, so I've purged it all.
    – RegDwigнt
    Aug 8, 2015 at 15:30
  • Not right now, no. I had to run the other day, and today the chat's being maintained so even just searching for the keywords (or any keyword at all) is not working.
    – RegDwigнt
    Aug 8, 2015 at 16:10

1 Answer 1

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I have managed to find the three questions from the clues here, and undeleted them. The fact that one of the affected answers was mine did not influence that decision at all!

It's not particularly straightforward to change the "duplicate" link target, but that might be the request to make in your flag(s): "Please change the target link as a duplicate to X, which is the real answer" or some such. I can't say that that will be done, or that such a flag will be judged helpful, but it's probably clear.

I hope for the moment that order is restored to the universe :-)

Just how to answer the "how manieth" questions that we get at least weekly might usefully be the subject of a meta post, I think.

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  • Thank you, so much!
    – Mari-Lou A
    Aug 6, 2015 at 21:45
  • Would you please edit your post and say that in future if users wish to attract the attention of mods in similar situations to do so only via "chat" or in meta. Thank you. Please see Robusto's comment and my replies, both in chat and here in meta.
    – Mari-Lou A
    Aug 7, 2015 at 12:43

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