Could any of the moderators tell me why this post stats.stackexchange.com/questions/88282 was deleted? It was marked as a duplicate, and I flagged it to be re-marked as a duplicate of another question, but then the post disappeared altogether. If I remember correctly, it even had an answer with several upvotes.

@Jens Ah! personnel

@amoeba I can see who deleted it; you should probably ask about it on meta. Sometimes there's a good reason, sometimes it's a simple mistake (which can be undone)

@amoeba Was the answer (by Aksakal) was moved over to the one that duplicated?

(That might have been the intent, at least.)

@Glen_b: no, the answer was not moved anywhere (as far as I can see). It looks to me as if it was a mistake - perhaps a wrong button clicked. I was hoping whoever did it will notice my message here and I then won't need to start a meta thread

Can you flag the deleted post for moderator attention? I can't because I can't access it.

@amoeba I just realized I could vote to undelete. Let's try that first.

Nope, no good - it won't let me undelete a post a mod has deleted.

I flagged it as you suggested.

@Glen_b thanks, changed!

@amoeba (cc @Glen_b) I haven't any idea why it was deleted. I undeleted it, reopened it, and then closed it as a duplicate of another thread, as suggested in your flag.

hey glen and whuber thanks for your comments. I've done a lot of stats in college but trying to learn copulas purely from papers, for work stuff, has proved difficult thus far but I think I'm on the right track finally. Statistical notation while unambiguous, I find very difficult to learn from.

@whuber out of curiosity, why was stats.stackexchange.com/q/135665/36229 protected? pre-emptive?

or were the answers starting to overlap?

@ssdecontrol It had at least one low quality comment-posted-as-answer from a brand new account, which was deleted.

Even as a comment it would likely have been deleted.

But it might just have survived.

As an answer, it would be deleted one way or another; the question is of the type that more such answers seem likely.

I can't say I disagree with it. It is, however, an action that's easily undone. If you want it unprotected, just flag it.

I expect if you've got any reasonable of reasoning, it would probably be done.

It (the non-answer) would be entirely appropriate in chat, the bad spelling aside.

(It's a little PG, since it makes a point about simulation by comparing it to masturbation.)

I think saying "well, looks like we'll probably get more here, let's protect it from people that haven't posted before and don't know this isn't reddit" is a sensible approach.

All it takes to get over the hurdle is 10 reputation.

@ssdecontrol Two reasons. (1) It was starting to collect garbage answers from newbies, as @Glen_b explained. (2) It's also starting to accumulate list-of-examples responses to the second half of the question. If the second half were posted on its own, it would be closed as off-topic or at least changed to CW. Many of the answers address only question (2), which makes them only marginally appropriate. Protecting the thread was the mildest possible step I could take to help people stay focused.

@Glen_b I agree with your points. In fact, I was cautious and did not destroy the new user's account. (Account destruction would be the ordinary response to somebody who is clearly just surfing by and has no intention of constructive engagement. It happens a few times a month.)

@whuber -- good point about the list-type responses.