Petition that all COVID-19-specific questions (i.e. not ones which can be applied to the COVID-19 situation but also apply elsewhere) be immediately closed as off-topic as practical halacha. As careful as we are in general about trying to make sure people ask their Rabbi for personal psakim, during this time especially we need to make sure people don't rely on us for practical advice.

Can a mod please merge phone into technology?

@DonielF You should probably take that to Meta, and include examples of questions that apply to the current plague and to no other.

I’d like to point out some added depth I discover in my own question: judaism.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5291/16706

The question presumes something which will not occur, therefore it seems like a dismissal-able answer. But clearly the asker has high hopes for hard to see situations which is why it was asked. In the old prec19 age, some of the questions who be more obvious as fiction, however at the present juncture can’t it be argued that many of these questions are ask your rabbi questions, not suitable for here.

The תרצן could respond that perhaps all theoretical questions can be applied as practical, and we will undoubtedly cross such a bridge then.

I now ponder whether there already exists extensive meta discussion on these types of topics.

@Dr.Shmuel Indeed, this is a general issue with psak-seeking questions in that the OP can post the question initially in a theoretical tone, or perhaps put his own CYLOR disclaimer in it. But given the current crisis, I think it's fair to assume that any COVID-19-centric question, where the question either cannot be generalized because of the particulars of the situation or the OP insists it's COVID-19-specific, is being asked for practical purposes.

On @msh210's advice I'm going to continue this on Meta.

@DonielF FWIW, I for one am interested in reading C19 Q&A whether it's practically applicable to me or not

@DonielF מסכים. That, or someone will take it as such.

@IsaacMoses And that's certainly a valid point, part of the reason why I'm limiting this to COVID-19-specific questions and not general pandemic ones. But if it's too specific, I think the risk of someone taking it practically outweighs the benefits of the intellectual discussion.

@Meta-Man I think it's to speak about covid19 as people speak in a lot of websites. There is no reason to think that people will be more confused about the nature of Mi Yodeya

judaism.stackexchange.com/a/112208/16354

by what criteria was the above deleted, and by what criteria was it classified as "spam or rude or abusive"?

@רבותמחשבות I don't know the answer to your second question. The answer to your first: a net-negatively-voted answer with three deletion votes.

I can't speak to why the users voted to delete. That's up to each user.

@msh210 I understand. I thought maybe people in here would be able to shed some light on a potential reason for voting to delete or mark it as "spam or rude or abusive", since I can't understand what the rationales would be for doing that.