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Recently, there have been a number of users who deface their own questions soon after posting them. In some cases, members of the community have invested time and effort in order to answer these questions, only to have all their hard work negated by the users’ acts of defacement. Hence, can moderators do anything to stop a user from defacing his/her own post? (Why would someone even consider defacing his/her post in the first place? It makes no sense to me at all.)

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    $\begingroup$ "Why would someone even consider defacing his/her post in the first place?" meta.math.stackexchange.com/q/8528 $\endgroup$
    – user856
    Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 6:41

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Flag these posts for self-vandalism and mention in the flag that the user defaced multiple posts. Moderators can and will suspend the user to stop this.

You can try to rollback the edit once, if the user vandalizes the post again, don't edit again. Don't get into an edit war, in such a case you need a moderator who has the tools to deal with this.

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  • $\begingroup$ Yes. I have now seen the power of a moderator. $\endgroup$
    – Haskell Curry
    Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 6:59
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If needed, after a request to stop and a warning, moderators can suspend users, and they can lock questions to make them impossible to edit.

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    $\begingroup$ Dear Jonas, this seems to be a very reasonable solution. However, I haven’t really seen any of this in action yet. As I currently speak, there’s a certain user who’s methodically defacing every single post of his/hers. $\endgroup$
    – Haskell Curry
    Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 6:36
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    $\begingroup$ @HaskellCurry, it happens sadly more often that what I would wish. If this is happening, please tell us. $\endgroup$
    – Mariano Suárez-Álvarez
    Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 6:42
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    $\begingroup$ @Mariano: Yes. I’m very disturbed by such behavior. It can actually discourage new users from wanting to answer questions in the future, for fear of losing their answers. $\endgroup$
    – Haskell Curry
    Commented Feb 21, 2013 at 7:02

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