The meta question Not actually a question, just a rant! has inspired me to ask for what an answerer can do in case of self-deletion by the question asker while the answerer is typing the answer.
Since per se site is supposed to be a collection of Q&A, can one re-post the deleted question provided that it has good context?
Due to CC-BY-SA 3.0 license on SE network, once a post is published to the SE network, then it's released to the community. Therefore, everyone has the right to use the contents of every post provided that the post owner is properly attributed (through a URL).
The self-deletion action doesn't nullify the act of posting, so in principle, the previous paragraph applies to self-deleted posts as well. In practice, 10k users can view all deleted posts by their URL, so it won't be difficult to click "edit" to retrieve the Markdown source code of the self-deleted post and repost.
For other users, they may put the URL of the self-deleted question, which is viewable by 10k users, in order to properly attribute the original answerer. They may omit the original question asker's user name and the original question title since it's covered by a message like "this question has been deleted"---the URL will enable 10k users to find out the original question. Nevertheless, the re-posted question should be complete in the sense that it's answerable on its own.
Edit: Creative common licenses are irrevocable. This consolidates my arguments that the act of granting the community the right to reuse the question is irreversible.
License Grant. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, Licensor hereby grants You a worldwide, royalty-free, non-exclusive, perpetual (for the duration of the applicable copyright) license to exercise the rights in the Work as stated below:
- to Reproduce the Work, to incorporate the Work into one or more Collections, and to Reproduce the Work as incorporated in the Collections;
- to create and Reproduce Adaptations provided that any such Adaptation, including any translation in any medium, takes reasonable steps to clearly label, demarcate or otherwise identify that changes were made to the original Work. For example, a translation could be marked "The original work was translated from English to Spanish," or a modification could indicate "The original work has been modified.";
- to Distribute and Publicly Perform the Work including as incorporated in Collections; and, -to Distribute and Publicly Perform Adaptations.
Would it not be possible to add a feature that gives notice of imminent self-closure? Like a 5-minute warning? Or just require notice in a comment? I have closed quite a few of my own questions but try to indicate imminent closure in a comment in case someone is working on an answer so they have a chance to object. I think most posters would refrain from closing if asked, and they would keep a question open for the same reason they would have closed it: regard for the opinions/time of other users.
The legalistic argument leaves me cold. Deleting doesn't nullify posting...? It's surely a reflection of the poster's intent, which should be honored unless there is some compelling reason to do otherwise. I can't imagine insisting on legal ownership of a MSE question over the OP's sense that the question has no merit. There is no shortage of interesting unanswered questions on the site.
