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On the question What's the relationship among the many uses of the name "Praxis" in sci-fi?, there are several deleted answers that were deleted by the Community ♦ user: here1, here, and here. For example:

enter image description here

How did this happen? The Community ♦ user can delete spam and offensive answers if they receive six flags (or a single moderator flag), but in such cases the text of the post will be hidden. A post can also be deleted if it receives six “Recommend Deletion” votes from the review queue, but then it shows the names of the people who deleted it. It must be an automatic process of some sort, of course, but what is the criterion?

1: All deleted answers only available to 10k+ users.

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  • All three answers appear to be from the same user, sock-puppeting after getting their account splatted.
    – Valorum
    Oct 28, 2016 at 8:51
  • @Valorum - So the Community user also does automated sockpuppet maintenance?
    – Adamant
    Oct 28, 2016 at 8:56
  • @Valorum - Yes, Community is in charge of deleting spam answers. Those answers were not flagged as spam, though. Answers deleted after being flagged as spam are hidden.
    – Adamant
    Oct 28, 2016 at 9:19
  • "A post can also be deleted if it receives six “Recommend Deletion” votes from the review queue, but then it simply shows as “deleted,” without any user (even Community ♦ )" - Actually, as of about yesterday, this is no longer true. See e.g. this deleted answer.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Oct 28, 2016 at 13:20
  • @Randal'Thor - Wow, that is new. Was there any sort of announcement, or did this just happen?
    – Adamant
    Oct 28, 2016 at 20:25
  • @Adamant No announcement as far as I know, although I suspect there's a few new status-completed tags and CM answers on main meta. There have actually been a few new features just recently; it may be that CMs have been rushing to get things completed before the company meetup next week.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Oct 28, 2016 at 21:51

1 Answer 1

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A quick look at the timelines for these posts shows that these users were destroyed. The fact that there's three in a row with basically the same answer indicates that they were almost certainly creating sockpuppet accounts for the purposes of posting worthless answers.

After a user is destroyed, the Community♦ bot goes in and deletes all of their previous answers, which is what you can see.

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  • 1
    Personally I agree with TheifMaster's feature request "Launch a missile at the user's last-known location when selecting to destroy them"
    – Valorum
    Oct 28, 2016 at 9:29
  • 3
    galaxy note 7 can work, no need for missile Oct 28, 2016 at 9:47
  • 1
    IIRC, only posts with negative scores are deleted when the user is destroyed.
    – Kevin
    Oct 28, 2016 at 18:04
  • 2
    @Kevin Nope, that's for deleted users. When the user is destroyed, all their posts go with them.
    – Rand al'Thor Mod
    Oct 28, 2016 at 21:56
  • 1
    @Randal'Thor - On the principle that you only destroy a user if their entire contribution has been utterly worthless.
    – Valorum
    Oct 28, 2016 at 22:44

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