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This comment-like answer was posted by a rep-1 user with no (AFAICT) other posts, and then silently deleted within 15 minutes, leaving the poster wondering why.

The user then posted a copy of the answer, where some others have commented and let him know that "This place is not like a forum. Your answer should literally answer the question.". A while after this the answer was deleted too.

The second deletion was OK. But the first one could have been better IMO. Particularly, I'd expect either the moderator to post an explanation (maybe canned, as available in the Review), or there to be a banner (or whatever it's called here) above the post, explaining what's wrong with the post and linking to the relevant documentation. The Q&A format is not very familiar to many new users, after all.

Or am I missing something? Is there already an explanation that's not visible to anyone except the poster of the deleted answer?

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That was me. I usually leave such a comment, but on this occasion I didn’t. A mistake, for which I apologize.

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"Is there already an explanation that's not visible to anyone except the poster of the deleted answer?"

Yes, there is precisely that. It appears as a banner just underneath the deleted answer, and it is only visible to the original author of the answer. It links to this Help Center article: Why and how are some answers deleted?

Therefore, it is unnecessary noise (not to mention a needless waste of time) for diamond moderators to leave comments underneath an answer when that answer is deleted for one of the standard reasons discussed in that Help Center article. You only need to leave a comment when you are deleting an answer for an exceptional or uncommon reason, and/or if you want to give additional, targeted advice to the user on how to improve the answer to make it meet the guidelines and therefore achieve its undeletion.

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  • $\begingroup$ Is this author-only banner more new-user-friendly than, or otherwise different from, the banner that appears at the top of the deleted answer? That one says, in this case, “This answer is hidden. It was [deleted] X days ago by [rob].” $\endgroup$
    – rob Mod
    Oct 10, 2021 at 13:24
  • $\begingroup$ It's different…It shows up underneath the deleted answer. I am not sure why the two features are not combined, but the one I'm thinking of is quite old. I did a quick search on MSE to try and find an example, but didn't find one very quickly. Best I found was this Q&A, talking about a similar banner on questions, rather than answers. That implies it existed going all the way back to 2011. I remember a long time ago telling Jeff Atwood how I love this site because of all the little touches that are put into place, even when only seen by a few people. $\endgroup$
    – Cody Gray - on strike
    Oct 12, 2021 at 6:00
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    $\begingroup$ I've looked back through my old answers that might show this author-only message, and I don't see one. The deleted-answer banners were updated during the the post-notice overhaul in 2019; one of the major changes was that the post notices moved from the bottom to the top. Given the frequencies with which I do or don't leave a comment when deleting an answer, and the frequencies with which those deletions do or don't result in a Meta post, I'm going to politely disagree with your assertion that an explanatory comment is a waste of time. $\endgroup$
    – rob Mod
    Oct 12, 2021 at 13:52

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