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When a user tries to acces a deleted question, if they don't have 10k+ reputation or diamond moderator privileges, they'll only see a generic message like "this post has been deleted for reasons of moderation". This is even true if the user is the owner of that question.

For answers, there are mechanisms in place to ensure that user will get notifications for moderator comments even if their answere is deleted. This is important to be able to explain to the users what they did wrong, and still be able to delete the post right away without having to wait for the user to come back and read the feedback. I've made a feature request to extend this beyond just diamond moderators to all moderating users, but that still only works for answers, not for questions.

I don't want to let crap questions stay around longer than they have to, I'd like to just vote to delete them right away. But if I vote to delete a question right after closing it (especially on the sites where I'm a moderator), the user might not have visited the question in the meantime. In that case he won't receive the feedback that hopefully was given in comments, and he also won't be able to even read the close reason.

So what I have to actually do for crappy questions is to close them, and then remember to check back after a while to delete them, when I think the user has read the feedback. This approach has several drawbacks, it lets the crap stay visible on the site for longer, and it forces me to memorize or note the post so that I can revisit it.

I shouldn't have to do any of this to ensure that the user receives his feedback, the only considerations for deleting should be the quality or lack therof of the actual post. As a diamond moderator I also have to make sure that I don't prevent the community from moderating by deleting borderline questions too quickly.

Users don't need to be able to see their deleted posts forever or have the complete list of those in their profile, but they should be able to see them for a short time after they're deleted if they haven't seen all comments or the close reason yet. The post should stay visible for them, listed in their profile and notifications on it visible in the global inbox until they visited the deleted post, or a specific timeframe like 48h after deletion.

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I think that question author should be able to see it given a direct link, same way 10K members can see it. As it's not visible in the profile, adding a notification to the StackExchange inbox saying "your question was deleted" and linking to it will make it whole. Currently I think there's no notification anywhere when a post is removed. –  Shadow Wizard Jun 10 '12 at 12:01
No notifications, I think most people realize a post was deleted when their rep changes. –  Lix Jun 10 '12 at 12:34
@Lix not if other rep changes occurred, it was a low-voted question, 0 votes, ect. Plus they won't have a link if there's no notification. –  Ben Brocka Jun 10 '12 at 13:41
As a side note, this probably shouldn't happen on auto-deleted questions, as those have been closed for at least a month (or year) –  Ben Brocka Jun 10 '12 at 13:49
@BenBrocka - No they aren't. There is no requirement for the question to be closed first. If a month old zero scored question with no answers happens to get a downvote then next time the script runs it will be removed causing confusion as here –  Martin Smith Jun 10 '12 at 14:00
+1 from me. I've never quite understood why users can't see their own deleted questions. –  Robert Harvey Jun 10 '12 at 22:26
@Lix. Some people (me, for example) don't care tuppence about rep. My rep could go up or down a couple of thousand points and I quite simply wouldn't notice. –  TRiG is Timothy Richard Green Aug 22 '12 at 11:58
I've just received a comment notification containing the first like of a comment describing the solution to an issue where the OP decided to remove the question. My StackExchange Inbox contains the same first line and on SO the comment does not appear at all in my User Page > Responses > Comments :-( So the OP has sent me a comment that I can only see the first like of. –  Mark Hurd Mar 2 '13 at 1:15
like => line. And I just noticed I'm not informed of the OP's identity in any of the comment notifications (Supercolider Inbox, StackExchange Inbox, or the email notifying me of something in my inbox), so I can't even locate the OP... –  Mark Hurd Mar 2 '13 at 1:30

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