Question Deleted Shortly After Receiving Answer: Is this Acceptable Behaviour?

Question

An hour or so ago I posted an answer to a question about finding an internal rate of return. The question looked like homework, but was well-presented and with effort shown. Within a few minutes of my posting an answer the question was deleted. Since the question had been showing for more than 17 hours, its deletion seems likely to have been prompted by my answer.

In case it is relevant, I had deleted my answer before the question was deleted, as I had had second thoughts about one point and wasn't able to spend time editing it right away. It was when I returned to try to post an amended answer that I found the question had been deleted.

While I can't be sure, it seems likely that deletion of the question was by the person who asked it (whose name I can't recall), possibly with the intention, once they had received an answer, of concealing the fact that they had used Econ SE to obtain help with homework.

Should this be regarded as bad behaviour, and if so is there anything that can be done to discourage it?

Answer 1

This is definitely not acceptable behavior on SE (see this post or discussion here). In fact any question with answer that has positive score is automatically protected and cannot be deleted by the author but in this case I assume it was done before anyone had chance to review your answer and possibly upvote it.

In such case you should always contact us moderators, we can investigate what has happened and potentially undelete the question as explained in this meta post on mathematics.se (this is network wide practice I just cant find relevant post on meta.se)

Please, if someone removes a question taking an answer with it, let the moderators know.

If you want to find your own deleted answers do the following.

Go to your profile page. Select the tab answers Scroll to the bottom. You will find a link deleted recent answers. Click it.

Then please flag it four our attention (or if you want post link to it here).

I can't in advance commit to any action because the post might have been deleted for various reasons, but if it is just frivolous deletion of a post with useful answer it can get undeleted, so if you care about it please flag it for our attention.