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One of the answers on "What species of flower might Jesus have been referring to when he said, “Consider the lilies”?" has been mod-deleted, but I can't see any reason why this should be — there wasn't any comment on the post by the mod indicating the reason for deletion.

It is very long, but most of the length is a compendium of on-topic quotes from a wide variety of sources: a lot of effort has obviously gone into the post which probably reflected in the 4 upvotes it had at the time of deletion (it also had two downvotes but I can't tell if they reflect the latest revision).

Of course any answer would pale next to Schuh's outstanding effort yesterday, which will no doubt always be the top answer (and deservedly so), but we don't need to delete other answers on a question when there is one excellent answer: the whole reason Q&A works here is that the most useful answers tend to float to the top.

If it had been closed by the community I'd just vote to undelete and leave it at that — those with high rep on the site can decide one way or the other, but with mod-deletion there is no option to do so:

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Please may we know the reason for the deletion and some indication of what the standard is for doing so in general.

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    I can guess why; but that's above my paygrade. You're the best one to ask. Incidentally, the individual in question did reconcile his answer, and 'appeared' to be following Site Directives. Of course, repeat plagiarism is a cause for deletion; but I noticed it came before "Shuh"'s answer. What the process of edits was that led to the comments I can't decipher.
    – Tau
    Feb 5, 2016 at 13:52

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
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The post has been edited and undeleted.

I didn't realize mod-deletion does not allow undeletion. My apologies. This particular user has many egregious cases of blatant disregard for not applying the text to modern Christians and assuming the readers share his Christian faith (and should - often prescriptively). Even subtle prescriptive language is problematic. Normally I would just edit the "our"'s to focus on the original audience of the text or the OP personally without lumping in the reader, but this user has demonstrated complete disregard for such an approach and I simply don't believe editing is worth my effort. Perhaps that's the wrong attitude. If you are willing to edit, I'm willing to undelete (or another mod can, please simply flag it when edited).

I knew it was an "iffy" deletion which is why I mentioned that I did it (and to another moderator) for a second (and more) opinion.

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  • My bad was not realising I can edit a mod-deleted answer, thanks for suggesting that. However on careful-ish reading I really didn't find much to be concerned about: I edited a single instance of the word 'us' that I found.
    – Jack Douglas
    Feb 5, 2016 at 16:14
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    My concern was this statement from the Library: "while it has some decent stuff, the good stuff is purely quotes from commentaries, and most of them not so great ones ... quoted from poor commentaries." I do not think quality of legitimate commentary sources (i.e. ones that are in some way directly interacting with the text) that people use should be a basis for deletion. Down vote an answer if one feels the commentaries are not good, but the fact that someone went to "authorities" to answer is a good thing generally.
    – ScottS
    Feb 5, 2016 at 16:23
  • @ScottS you are correct that the quality of the sources is no reason to delete. The issue for me was primarily the first person plural language that assumed and exhorted Christian readers. I was just going to delete that then realized all that would remain were quotes with little else, and not even very good ones at that. At that point there would be nothing else left.
    – Dan
    Feb 5, 2016 at 17:16
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    I made some additional minor edits and undeleted the post. I believe I may have actually viewed parts of another version of that post that the OP edited out after I had initially flagged it (I sometimes don't get around to following up for days depending on my work schedule).
    – Dan
    Feb 5, 2016 at 17:26
  • @Dan Yes, by the comment trail it appears the OP edited at least twice (I did not go check the edits), so I did wonder if each edit improved even on the points you took issue with or not.
    – ScottS
    Feb 5, 2016 at 17:35
  • @ScottS I believe the edits did improve several of the issues I initially saw
    – Dan
    Feb 6, 2016 at 16:03

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