Why was my question from 4 years ago recently deleted?

Question

I think it's a reasonable question which can be answered. Why was it deleted?

Answer 1

The SE has a cleanup process that automatically deletes questions that haven't been well received. The exact criteria for deleting questions are described here. Your question fell victim to the automatic clearup because it had no answers and a negative score.

Answer 2

To add a bit more detail to John Rennie's answer, your question was deleted by the "roomba", whose operation is described in the Help Center here. The specific reason given by the roomba was 'RemoveDeadQuestions', under these specific criteria:

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

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

The timeline for the question (accessible by clicking the 'clock' symbol below the voting arrows) shows that the question reached a quiescent state at net score zero (+1, -1) some three weeks after answering, and that it then received a downvote on 1 January, bringing it down to negative score and ticking the first box of the criterion (with the other two already ticked).

Your question isn't bad, as such, but it definitely looks like it needs some improvements in presentation to make it clearer, up front, what it is you want to ask. For now the question has two undelete votes, but it's possible that it will fall back under the roomba's weekly sweep if it's undeleted and its score does not go up.