My answer to What is special about Maxwell's equations? was deleted by a moderator. The OP asked what is special about the Maxwell equations, which, according to the OP, are basically a combination of "4 equations that were already formulated by other physicists". It looked like the OP was surprised that the equations that did not contain anything new are held in such respect. I noted in my answer that Maxwell was the first to introduce the displacement current (which is a critical part of the Maxwell equations). I believed that was at least a partial answer to the OP's question: the displacement current (maybe among other things) does make the Maxwell equations special. The moderator considered the answer "critique of the question, not an answer". Was the deletion really warranted?
EDIT(4/8/2017): Another moderator has just made an indirect contribution to this discussion, converting to a comment my answer to this question: Can reactions be controlled electromagnetically . The moderator's explanation: "I'm converting this answer to a comment because it currently is a set of suggested search terms and a reference to a paper, which makes it more like a "link-only" answer than an answer that stands on its own." What may be somewhat amusing is that the answer was accepted:-) So the OP decided the answer was what (s)he needed (by the way, the deleted answer that I discussed above got quite a few upvotes). Let me note that comments on this site are meant to be volatile and can disappear without any reason. But what is important for this discussion: what standards should be applied to answers? Let me include the rules of the site that I already quoted in my comments:
"Any answer that gets the asker going in the right direction is helpful" and "Brevity is acceptable, but fuller explanations are better."(https://physics.stackexchange.com/help/how-to-answer). I also quoted the Community Manager: (Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?): "See, this is an answer: "You probably want a FileOutputStream" And so is this: "Look at manual for preg_split, third argument" Yes, they're both very short, and yes, they contain links. But strip the markup, and you still get at least a little bit of useful information."
So, according to the rules, mine is definitely an answer, not a comment. So maybe some moderators, who have very high reputation and (unlike me) write excellent answers, apply higher standards than warranted by the rules? It may well be that they are right to do that, but in that case should not they have the rules changed first?
FileOutputStream
" answers Shog's example question. You should be comparing your deleted answer to the one Shog starts that post with because the analogy is exact. $\endgroup$