This morning I saw that one of my answers on SO had been un-accepted; it was a valid answer to a question asked by this individual several months ago.

His profile description now says only, "please delete me", and it looks like he un-accepted answers to several of his questions before quitting, apparently without any good reason.

I'm not one to cry foul over 15 points, but there were other unaccepted answers by users who might feel the effects. Is there a system in place to compensate for this similar to the one that reverses serial downvoting?


The user only unaccepted answers on questions with a negative score.

These questions will be deleted with the account; only questions with a positive score are retained (and anonymised). This deletion happens regardless of the accept status on them, but perhaps the user mistakenly thought that would not be the case.

In other words, you'll lose not only the accept points, but the points you got from upvotes on your answer as well, the moment the user account is deleted.

  • I don't actually see any reason for his account to be deleted, other than his stated wishes. But I'm sure there are rules and precedents about that, too. – Blazemonger Aug 28 '14 at 13:21
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    @Blazemonger: you are always free to ask for your account to be deleted. The procedure for that includes changing your 'about me' text to 'please delete me'. This user appears to be following protocol; the account is given a few days reflection time on the decision, since it is irreversible. – Martijn Pieters Aug 28 '14 at 13:23
  • Ah, ok -- that information along with both answers give me a clearer picture of what his motivations (probably) were. – Blazemonger Aug 28 '14 at 13:24
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    So theoretically, a stellar answer to a downvoted question has the potential to be deleted along with the OP? Wouldn't it make sense to apply the same rules that goes for deleting questions manually, that is it won't get deleted if it has an upvoted answer? – ivarni Aug 29 '14 at 6:25
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    @ivarni: yup, that risk exists. The risk is small though; usually the question was probably not worth answering in the first place. If you are the author of such a question you usually notice, and you could use a moderator flag to request undeletion. Or post to Meta to request the community undeletes; the Community User delete can be reversed by 3 10k+ users. – Martijn Pieters Aug 29 '14 at 7:39
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    @MartijnPieters Fair enough. But why does the reversal badge exist if answering bad questions are unwanted behaviour? – ivarni Aug 29 '14 at 7:45
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    @ivarni there are always exceptions and the badge awards those. User deletions are not that common and a downvoted-question-with-great-answer deletion even rarer; I have written over 10k answers and I think I once had occasion to request a question undeletion after a account deletion event. – Martijn Pieters Aug 29 '14 at 7:49
  • Why are the questions with negative score, but with answers with positive score deleted? I've heard that generally such questions are kept (by the moderation). Why they are deleted in that single case? – Danubian Sailor Aug 29 '14 at 9:58
  • @Donaudampfschifffreizeitfahrt: Probably because the majority of account deletions are for moderation purposes; fraudulent accounts being destroyed. – Martijn Pieters Aug 29 '14 at 10:30

There's nothing the system can do if a user decides to retract any acceptances (or indeed any votes they can).

What we moderators can do is suspend the account while they talk to the community managers about getting their account deleted.

In this case I'm not sure that suspension would ultimately help as, as Martjin points out, they're only unaccepting negatively scoring posts and these will get deleted when the account is deleted.

  • @MartijnPieters - Suspended account are blocked from all activity. – ChrisF Aug 28 '14 at 13:18
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    But for a proper rage-unaccept, that would be bolting the barn after the horse has escaped. What options are there to undo the unaccepts, and should that be an option at all? – Martijn Pieters Aug 28 '14 at 13:19
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    @MartijnPieters - That is true, but there's nothing moderators can do to undo the unaccepts. I would expect someone with database access would be able to undo them, but that would be a big step. – ChrisF Aug 28 '14 at 13:21
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    I am on the fence on this; a rate limit or manual undo might be appropriate if there was actual substantial abuse, but even here I don't see evidence of this. – Martijn Pieters Aug 28 '14 at 13:22

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