@DanRomik not sure what to do about your flag. I am not sure your answer is really helpful. I think the votes are because it is humorous. I number of users flagged it as "not an answer". Care to make a case for why it is in fact an answer?

For 10k+ users: academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62646/…

can anyone make a case that the answer should be un-deleted?

@StrongBad All I know is that some users thought the answer was helpful - for example vonbrand defended it with a comment "@DougLipinski, it is right on the money." Another user wrote a lengthy comment praising my answer even more than I think it deserves to be praised. If you feel the answer should stay deleted, I'm fine with that, but I think it's safe to say that some people understood my intent and voted the answer up for its substance rather than just for the humor.

@DanRomik Perhaps you could edit it to make it clear to those who flagged it as "not an answer" how it answers the question. e.g. add a few lines of explanation at the end.

(P.S. Not necessarily about this specific post, but in general, upvotes on posts that were on the Hot Network Questions list and got a lot of views from SE users who aren't usually active on Academia don't mean that a significant number of members of the community found it helpful, since many of the votes come from users unfamiliar with this community. There are various discussions on main meta.SE about this, e.g. meta.stackexchange.com/q/238420/254250)

@DanRomik I do feel that it should stay deleted, that said, I do not want to impose my opinion on the community. I raised it here in chat to see if we could come to a community consensus or get a handful of people who feel strongly enough to vote for it to be undeleted.

@ff524 thanks for the suggestion. I feel that humor that needs to explain itself stops being effective, so probably it's better for the answer to stay deleted. Thank you both for your excellent moderation.

I found @DanRomik 's answer in yesterday's review queue: on the one hand, I thought it was a bit sub-standard; on the other, I thought that that would be what many would answer upfront to the OP's proposal. At the end, the latter thought prevailed, and I decided not to vote to delete.

@MassimoOrtolano so making it a comment does not seem unreasonable to you?

@StrongBad No, it doesn't seem unreasonable. Was there a way which I could have used to directly suggest conversion into a comment? I'm not at all comfortable with the review queue interface...

@MassimoOrtolano I don't think so. I think the only thing you could have done is flag it for moderator attention as "other" saying it should be a comment.

@StrongBad Thank you, I'll do it next time. But why doesn't it appear as a comment now?

@MassimoOrtolano the OP deleted it ...

@DanRomik Oh, please put your deleted answer back as a comment! I think that's exactly the right place for that sort of commentary!