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Lets assume that there are two Questions on DA say POST-A and POST-B posted by different users.

POST-A is marked as duplicate of POST-B.

I would like to know what happens to POST-A if post-B got deleted by it's owner? Will POST-A be automatically reopened?

I don't know whether DA has this feature or not, I didn't find a way to test this.

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  • Has this actually happened anywhere? – mpdonadio♦ Apr 28 '14 at 13:44
  • @MPD No, I didn't find this case in DA, but I'm just eager to know. – Krishna Mohan Apr 28 '14 at 13:46
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From my observations, there is no automatic reopening.

However, I've only seen this happen when one person keeps asking the same question over and over (usually in frustration over not getting any answers to the first version). In that case, the later versions are sometimes closed as duplicates. They are not automatically reopened when the first is self-deleted (nor should they, as this type of behaviour should not be encouraged).

I should add that in the case of similar questions asked by two different persons, this is very unlikely to happen.

The rules for self-deletion are:

Users can delete their own questions if the question:

  • has zero answers
  • only one answer, but that answer has no upvotes

Source: https://stackoverflow.com/help/deleted-questions

And unless POST-B has at least one upvoted answer, it is very unlikely that POST A will be marked as a duplicate of it (posts are not marked as a duplicate unless the superior question pointed to has a usable answer).

If POST-B has at least one upvoted answer, it can't be self-deleted, so the situation will not occur.

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  • 1
    posts are not marked as a duplicate unless the superior question pointed to has a usable answer or both are posted by the same user or diamond moderator closes them as dupes (happens if members of the same team post duplicates, as far as I have seen). And in the case of the same team, it is just as likely to happen as it is in case of one user. – Mołot Apr 28 '14 at 20:34
  • Thanks Free Radical, and @Mołot. I got it. but still some confusion let me try to explain. Let's assume that POST B has only one answer with 2 up-votes. So user (who posted the answer for POST B) can delete their post anytime. If so, POST A shouldn't be considered as duplicate of POST B.? In this scenario what happens? Sorry If I'm wrong – Krishna Mohan Apr 29 '14 at 6:22
  • @KrishnaMohan Never seen it happening. People usually delete answers that are 1) bad or 2) good, but worse than other of the answers. In such situations it changes nothing. Never seen anyone to delete answer that's actually good, and only one. If I'll see, I will probably flag for moderator's attention asking to undelete (or disassociate from user who deleted, mark as community wiki, and then undelete). – Mołot Apr 29 '14 at 6:28
  • @Mołot yes I agree, but this can happen, when user delete their answer because it is wrong, was written because misunderstanding of the question, or it is not an appropriate answer, and they notice that; even answer score is 3 (From my post meta.drupal.stackexchange.com/questions/2897/…) – Krishna Mohan Apr 29 '14 at 6:50
  • @KrishnaMohan as far as I know there is no automatic reopening for such cases. And, as far as I observed, it is a good tradition on Metas to ignore problems that simply are not happening until they starts to happen often enough to overwork diamond moderators. – Mołot Apr 29 '14 at 6:59
  • @Mołot Ok, thanks Molot, I didn't mean to prolong this question. Thanks for your time. :) – Krishna Mohan Apr 29 '14 at 7:03
  • @FreeRadical Thanks for you time and I got it now. :) – Krishna Mohan Apr 29 '14 at 7:03

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