Main question: Are there some (reasonably easy to use) tools to follow deletions on site?
In particular, are there some ways to find self-deleted questions? Are there some ways to see deleted content which was posted by users other than me?
Background. It is quite apparent from some of the recent discussions that there are some users who are closer to deletionism and some users that are closer to inclusionism (if I may borrow terminology from Wikipedia). There are several discussion in chat and on meta which show disagreement about deleting some posts. (I will not try to list examples, but anybody who follows meta very likely saw some posts related to this issue.) Some users even mentioned that they try at least to follow recent deletions using the tools that are available to them (see below).
Part of the reason why I specifically mentioned content posted by others is that sometimes in such discussions, the user who brought up some deleted post(s) was accused that they do this solely because they care about their own reputation. While this might be among the reasons why somebody asks about the deletion of a specific post, it seems to me that another possible explanation might be that it is much easier to notice if your own post was deleted, especially if it had some upvotes. And it is possible that the same user would disagree with deletions of some posts which do not benefit them reputation-wise, if they were aware of them. So I am curious which ways are there to see deletions of stuff where I did not contribute anything.
Another problem are self-deleted questions. Many of self-deletions might be completely honest - the OP might have noticed that the question does not make sense or they might delete it for some other legitimate reason. But in some instances the self-deletion can be considered cheating (the OP does not want other to see where they get the answer from) or at least detrimental to the site (the OP is satisfied with the answer, but does not leave it here despite it would be a good contribution to the site content.) There were several posts related to this issue: For example: Why do some users delete their questions after receiving an answer?, People who ask homework questions and then remove them, Is there need to patrol for deleted questions?
Limitation of some tools I am aware of. I am aware of a few ways in which it is possible to check for deleted content, but they have some limitations.
- It is possible to find your own deleted content - users with less that 10k reputation can only find posts that are not too old. Some details about this can be found here: Is there any way to see my deleted questions or answers? However, this is only limited to your own posts.
- Deletions/undeletions which influence your reputation are shown on your reputation tab if you check the "show removed posts" checkbox. See, for example: Where reputation disappears. But this is is again only limited to my own posts and in this case only to posts which caused non-zero reputation change.
- Moderator tools that are available to 10k+ users show both recent delete votes and recently deleted questions. But here it is only possible to see a few most recently deleted posts. (Only as many as fits in the space available there. For example, if you look there soon after the daily script for removal of abandoned questions, you only see deletions coming from this script.) And another important limitation is that self-deletions are not included here. See also this feature request on Meta Stack Exchange: Why are self-deleted posts not shown in the 10k Tools?
google site:math.stackexchange.com ...then choose thecachedoption for the hit (if found). There is a narrow window of time during which this may work, maybe in the hours' range. $\endgroup$