There was some discussion a few months ago that the question "Who or what was Tom Bombadil?" is general reference:
Why the Tom Bombadil question is not closed as a General Reference?
And it was closed shortly thereafter, Since SciFi.SE is one of the two sites that still allow "general reference" closures even after the experiment was deemed a failure, having it remain open set a bad precedent for new users who might not understand that quirk of SciFi's policies.
Fair enough that it's closed, but now it's deleted, and the additional information is now lost. I've looked on meta here and through the chat logs, but couldn't find any discussion about its deletion.
Instead, what I found was the issue was the question asked was general reference as written, even if people conceded the answers (like mine) provided information not necessarily found in the general references for which it was closed:
The LotR wiki on him has a small paragraph saying his origins are a mystery, and the Wikipedia entry has a somewhat larger but still incomplete description buried deep within the article. I think our question answers the root of the question more completely and directly than either of the wikis. — Kevin
While the question has indeed had two good answers that don't 100% duplicate Wikipedia, Mark's discussion on what race Tom may or may not be is the only additional information. The question doesn't seem to be calling for more than what's in Wikipedia. It may be possible to rewrite the question to make it more interesting. — Gilles
I believe the Bombadil question had a much better answer on oursite than the "general reference" it was closed as. I think I mentioned on meta, that question made me change my mind on having "general reference" as a close reason. — Keen
I really don't think the Tom Bombadil question should have been closed. [...] It might be fairly easy to find the answer, but it is a very interesting question still, and we have stuff above and beyond what is in any of the major wiki sites. — Pearsonartphoto
A few months ago, Stack Exchange had a blog post about the surreptitious deletion of content that was no longer acceptable on the platform but nevertheless had some historical or contextual usage. Towards the end, it mentioned how SE should be handling these types of no-longer-accpetable artifacts:
Last but not least, we’re experimenting with ways to keep some of the more useful – or even just fun – questions from the site’s history accessible in some way. To be clear: most of these are not great examples of questions that should be asked today… But some of them are, quite frankly, brilliant – and losing them entirely just because they aren’t a good fit for our strict Q&A format is wrong. For now, we’ve provided a “Historical Artifact” lock that completely freezes a question and its answers, preventing all further editing, voting, answering, and flagging.
And the historical lock interface was modified to make it clearer that questions locked for historical reasons are fundamentally different than other types of questions.
So conceding the argument that we still have the General Reference close reason and "Who or what was Tom Bombadil?" purportedly meets its criteria, given there was at least some amount of consensus there was some value to the question—even a suggestion it could be reworded and reopened—when was it deleted, and why was it deleted instead of at least locked for historical reasons?