Is an asker justified in deleting his question after receiving several good answers?

It's generally considered very rude. However there are numerous occasions when this might be desired:

*If none of the answers address the question properly

*If there is an excess of hostility among the answers

*If personal information has been revealed unintentionally

*If the question itself is problematic or in violation

...just to name a few. For that reason I support the ability of askers to delete their questions even if there are answers given. I recommend that you make some backup of any answers that you care about or otherwise fear being lost.

I do realize that some people abuse this with respect to homework, though as cheating is concerned there's little difference if they delete the question or not. Either the stolen response will be cached by Google early on (and searchable even if deleted) or it will be months before it becomes searchable.

[It is possible that the asker may be stealing this property by deleting the questions with answers and making commercial use of the same.]

Theoretically yes, but highly unlikely. There is little to no commercial value in collecting individual answers from this site. You should be aware that Yahoo keeps records of everything that happens on this site. Additionally the intellectual property for your content belongs to you, not Yahoo. You grant them free license to use your work, but it does not prohibit you from using it or from making a copyright claim against another party.

[But instead they removed my quetion itself.]

To Yahoo, if you are committing a violation then you are against them. If your question was in violation, then it was to those who answered it as unfortunate as if you had deleted it yourself, with the exception that they may have known it would be removed.

Lastly I wanted to comment that I like the idea of being able to ask a question anonymously or to de-personalize questions after they are resolved. I think a lot of users would support that.

Madhukar Daftary, it is unfortunate that the asker has wasted your time, but in all honesty, you are probably wasting more time and I foresee little to no actions being done (at least on Yahoo's side of it). It is not a perfect community by any means. I have stopped answering a lot of questions because 99% are users who copy and paste their homework assignments (if you're lucky, they actually took the time to type it up) and hope one of the helpful people here will be motivated enough by points or whatever to basically do their homework for them. I actually love to help people who attempted to do the problem themselves but are having a hard time understanding certain parts of the problem, but I can count those instances on one hand. The rest, sadly, are just exploiting others' time, effort and kindness.

When I see a challenging or interesting problem, the reward for me is simply being able to solve the problem, not 10 imaginary points in an online ranking system. If that is not enough for you, avoid answering such problems since a lot of times, users will let you down. I would just move on, it is simply just not worth my time, especially when no money is involved.

EDIT: I really like the suggestion of an asker not being able to delete a question after it has been answered (and perhaps the option to remain anonymous, too, though that has pros and cons). I do not see why that is not the policy to begin with, or at least have more strict negative repercussions for deleting an answered question. Unfortunately there is only so much we can do if Yahoo refuses to change its policies. I have suggested hosting a saved copy of the problem elsewhere, or taking a screenshot and linking to it. I am by no means opposing providing useful/helpful material for those who do wish to learn and respect the hard work of the community. Best regards, all! :)

No, I feel that it is misuse of the site to delete the question once you've received a helpful answer.

If your other question concerning this problem was deleted, it was probably because you identified the user. It's not allowed to 'call out' other members.

You can appeal the deletion and the Violation Notice, but you are unlikely to be successful as calling out other members is indeed against the rules. When you lose the appeal, you'll lose an additional 10 points.

No, there are so many sick people who are abusing this policy. They simply post a hard question (for me of course) which requires some times due to a long solution, and as soon as they get the answer they delete the question, it's really annoying as well as unfair to all the honest students with real questions.

Regards.

@MAGlCK : Why do you think that this is about some useless 10 points? I care about my work because I spend time try to come up with the best possible solution, when some sick idiot delete my work just for fun and games, it makes me very upset, and I don't give a damn about the points. In the last 4 years here in YA, I've seen some very bizarre actions which tells me of some very incompetent, unprofessional and poorly trained staff. For example the new stupid/idiotic edit policy which is going to move my answer to the bottom of stack, is totally anti-progress/improvement which in just few weeks has significantly lowered the quality of the answers specially in the Math/Science category because many people including myself refuse to be penalized just for trying to improve or add additional information for the students. I respect "their house their rules" policy, within logic and reason, but I reject illogical totally idiotic rules, no matter who makes them, and I'll fight back hard for the right stuff.

Regards.

I have experienced similar frustration/outrage at this practice, and for a while my "About me" was something to that effect. Eventually I accepted there are very many rude people on here with selfish agendas, and it's best to take it for what it is. I participate at mathhelpforum.com where it is against the rules to delete your question (this mainly indicates cheating and wishing to hide evidence), and there a mod will restore your question, but this requires quite a lot of moderation.

I have Firefox with Screengrab add-on such that it remembers that I use .png and what directory I want to save images to, and I've gotten into the habit of saving interesting questions/answers quickly using the add-on, in case they would get deleted later on. Of course the text is a bit harder to get to in a .png, but I find it more convenient than saving .html and related files.

Current version of Screengrab is 0.96.3 if anyone interested

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/114...

@magick

i understand your pov, but it is not the same for everyone. i, as many here, participated in YA for my own selfish need for more knowledge, but there are some who came to help other forumers and students. Mr. Daftary here has a free website for maths and physics to help students, so those questions [and useful answers] should and would have gone a long(er) way to teach / reach wider public, not just the asker alone. if 1 ANSWER is so interesting it inspired an average pupil to learn and love science more, the loss of that QnAs just cost the world a future scientist.

yea, it's very annoying.

they do it either to save points

or to prevent others from using the ans.

i agree to your 1st suggestion,

but YA is a past master in the art of taking no action !

There are not so many of them. It always annoying but rarely lethal. Just block them so you'll remember to ignore their q's.

did you get message from YA as to why deleted qs.

Wow

All over the map -- You worked into your question an implication of a corporation owning my intelectual property as well as every other user for free just by typing on a board owned by the corporation

Sine Y/A -- has yet to offer me compensation for any property I retain ownership of said property and therefore it is mine to delete and to judge the merits of

If I spray paint E = MC 2 does the building owner then retain the property of the formula because it was spray painted on their building and if so would you argue they have royalty rights for every scientific work using that formula ? Why do you think some far off Y/A corporate fat cat owns this paragraph then ?