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I do not know how I am supposed to do this.

According to the help system,How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted, and what does that actually mean? What are the criteria for deletion? , I am supposed to ask here to have my answer undeleted by vote.

It is an answer to question Does trade affect Earth's rotation? At the time I wrote the answer the page contained several humorous comment. Some have been deleted since.

This induced me to write my answer in kind, though it was actually a serious answer as it was suggesting the most efficient way (not yet given by others) to actually do what the question asked. It is possible that my humor was too cryptic, as it was not understood, as the answer was deleted as irrelevant. Not knowing the system I did not try to edit it (as the help mentions that only for self-deletion), and I tried to explain in comments the problem and the meaning of the answer to have it undeleted. Without any success, when a final remark made me understand, after several hours, that I was supposed to edit it.

So I did, and I do believe it is a sensible and useful answer: https://physics.stackexchange.com/posts/69746/revisions. It was edited 15 hours ago, but nothing is happening. I understand that some users can vote on this. Can you help. Thank you.

Suggestion: it should be said more clearly on the help page that a question is supposed to be edited before it can be undeleted.

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  • $\begingroup$ Cases like this where a poster wants to edit and undelete a moderator-deleted answer are relatively rare, which is probably why the help page doesn't mention it. Usually, a person would just post a new answer that addresses the question more directly. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 1:33
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZaslavsky Well, silly as it may seem, I did not realize (until you said so here) that I could just make another answer. I thought I was barred from answering (the color system does not help too much on my screen). But, maybe that should be in the help : "if you think your answer was unfairly deleted, try to rephase in another answer, at your own risk". Why should I have taken all that time to explain in comments what I was trying to say, if I had known a more direct route? Comments are actually a somewhat painful medium. (comment written after the other 2) $\endgroup$
    – babou
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 10:58
  • $\begingroup$ If, as you say, there were already joke answers present David was no doubt just cleaning up (moderators are mostly janitors, and we do a lot of that). And yes, it looks like he could have spent a little more time writing a comment on your answer, but it wouldn't have been clear that you were being serious. This is one of the things flags are for: notifying the mods that we've made a mistake. That does happen. $\endgroup$
    – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Mod
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 15:45
  • $\begingroup$ @DavidZaslavsky My previous comment is actually wrong, sorry. I feel guilty too easily :-) I could not write a new answer because the question has been closed. Actually I am now wondering whether it should be reopened, given that it produced two reasonable answers. The good point of this question, as opposed to the other two, is that it hinted at reasonable answers. $\endgroup$
    – babou
    Commented Jul 5, 2013 at 14:42
  • $\begingroup$ It was closed as a duplicate, though. In a case like that you could have posted a new answer to the question it was marked as a duplicate of. $\endgroup$
    – David Z Mod
    Commented Jul 5, 2013 at 19:29

1 Answer 1

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You would need to bring it's edited condition to the attention of the moderators. A flag would have done, but this post will do.

In the future a flag is preferred as there is no real reason to leave a public trail for this kind of day-to-day thing.

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  • $\begingroup$ I hope there is no future opportunity for such a request, as far as I am concerned. However, I do think that, given the drastic effect of deletion, it should be the first measure only for situations calling for immediate action such as insults or discriminatory comments or such. If peace is not disrupted, some credit could be granted that the author of the answer actually had something to say. Comments are meant just for that. A further point is that wrong or misleading answers, that are not deleted, can be a lot more harmful. They do exist. Last, science should be fun, not just intellectual. $\endgroup$
    – babou
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 10:18
  • $\begingroup$ I wrote it as an answer because it was one. Jokes are much safer as comments, and hard to resist opportunities occur all too often. By writing my reply as an answer rather than a comment, I was knowingly taking the risk of being downvoted by users who would not understand. I could then edit if it became a problem. I was assuming, wrongly apparently, that people with a mind trained in physics would catch my meaning. This can be criticized because it is unfair to users not trained in physics, though the site can often be much more aggressive towards them than my innocuous, yet meaningful, joke. $\endgroup$
    – babou
    Commented Jul 3, 2013 at 10:38

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