I was directed just now to a post with the following abbreviated time-line:
- Question was posted 21 hours ago
- Question was closed as "unclear what you are asking" 19 hours ago
- Question was deleted by the votes of three 10K users 4 hours ago.
Yes, I get it: the original question is very vague and it was not at all clear what the OP is asking. But there were some users commenting and trying to help the OP formulate it into a mathematical question. The whole purpose of having posts put "On-Hold" versus "Closed" is that we are supposed to give new users a chance to edit their questions to a form that fits the community norm. This rapid-fire deletion runs entirely contrary to that.
Request: Can we please be a little bit more generous about deleting bad posts?
It is one thing to delete a low-quality orphan which the OP abandoned, but I feel that over-zealous deletions of recent posts (which are not obviously spam or offensive) is unfair to the new users and creates an unwelcoming atmosphere.
Worse, the OP is now essentially deprived of a chance of learning from his mistakes: if he cannot see the comments he cannot know why his earlier question is closed and deleted1! And sure enough my attention was brought to this question because the OP simply posted his question again2, identically to the original version that was closed and deleted. So the net effect is that the deletion of the original post is counterproductive to our goal of having clear, well-formed question on this site.
1 A user can see his own recently deleted question, though it may not be immediately obvious to new users how to do that. A user can also see his own deleted question at any time provided that the user saved the URL.
2 I should also add that footnote 1 notwithstanding, in the case that caught my attention the original poster used an unregistered account for the first post. This made it additionally difficult to see the comments on the deleted post.