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There can be many reasons why one would want to do it for example,

  • the author framed the question in some weird way and hence it led to some unproductive conversations/answers but over time when the author understands the topic better it looks awkward to have that old naively framed question still available on the net.
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There is a mechanism for that: flag for moderator attention.

Moderators can delete questions with upvoted answer, but they will require a good reason to do so. Being embarrassed about the question is not a good reason.

Posts on SE sites are licensed under the CC licence, so you can't just take them back whenever you want. As an alternative you can request your post to be anonymized, so that your user name no longer appears as the author.

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    $\begingroup$ How can I ask for some questions to be anonymized? (...that is definitely better than getting something deleted..) Sometimes even if the question was horribly framed there were some insights worth keeping in the answers and hence we can keep that. $\endgroup$ – user6818 Mar 29 '13 at 21:20
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    $\begingroup$ @Anirbit Write an email with the link to the post to team@stackexchange.com $\endgroup$ – Mad Scientist Mar 29 '13 at 21:25
  • $\begingroup$ @Mad Scientist Also the issue is not so much about feeling embarrased about the naivete of the question but often its about the snide remarks that come in the answers! Often I would not want a question of mine to not be there because of the replies which attacked me for my stupidity. $\endgroup$ – user6818 Mar 29 '13 at 23:35
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    $\begingroup$ @user6818 I know what you mean. If it happens to me, I always try to gracefully overlook certain remarks (by taking them not too serious) and focus on and learn from the physics of the good answers I get. BTW I like many of your and Anirbits questions and try to learn from them and the answers you get too. So just keep it going :-) $\endgroup$ – Dilaton Mar 30 '13 at 0:31
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    $\begingroup$ @user6818 If there are hostile comments on the question, just flag them and they will be removed. $\endgroup$ – Mad Scientist Mar 30 '13 at 7:51
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The short answer is "Not if that would mean deleting a valuable answer".

That's why you can delete your own question as long as it has no answer with a positive total score.

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  • $\begingroup$ Isn't there a way to salvage the good answers somewhere but allowing the author to get rid of the sad life-long baggage of a recorded for eternity stupid question? (..i guess the anonymous making options suggested by Mad Scientist is one way out..) $\endgroup$ – user6818 Mar 29 '13 at 21:41
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    $\begingroup$ The answer exist in the context of the question, you can't really do anything about that. $\endgroup$ – dmckee --- ex-moderator kitten Mar 29 '13 at 21:44
  • $\begingroup$ Suggestion to the answer (v1): Replace the phrase no answer with a positive total score with no answer with upvotes, cf. e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/q/5221/209806 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/74466/209806 $\endgroup$ – Qmechanic♦ Jan 10 '16 at 12:59

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