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I've had several recent answers on Stack Overflow deleted and I can't figure out why. If I'm doing something wrong when answering I'd like some feedback on what so I can correct it in the future.

As far as I understand I can't message the moderator to ask so I'm asking the question here instead. If that's not how it's supposed to work I apologize, but it would be helpful to learn what I'm doing wrong.

So what is the possible reason why @jean-françois-fabre would have deleted the below answer to "No valid exports main" when running Gatsby starter?

The current answer to the question is a bit more detailed, but essentially the same.

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    Is there a reason the question could not be closed as a duplicate of the question in your answer?
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 13:58
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    Similar answer has been posted a few hours ago.
    – glinda93
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 14:01
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    @bravemaster it's hard to tell from the timestamps but i was either first or we posted at the same time; i would not have added a duplicate answer. but anyway, are you supposed to delete duplicate answers?
    – ehrencrona
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 14:05
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    @ehrencrona Clearly, your answer is earlier (from what I see). I wanted to emphasize that your answer has a point there. See meta.stackexchange.com/questions/1096/…
    – glinda93
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 14:11
  • let"s wait for the moderator to give his explanation. We are all guessing here. I am pretty sure it's not related to the other answer
    – Temani Afif
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 14:19
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    This question is very unclear and lacks context imo
    – user12867493
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 14:19
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    @HereticMonkey The other question has no answers, so VTC as dupe is not permitted
    – CertainPerformance
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 15:13
  • @CertainPerformance Ah, thanks.
    – Heretic Monkey
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 15:35
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    I expect the "link only" nature of the answer (you would need to visit github to confirm the issue of the OP is indeed similar) is the reason a mod deleted it on sight. I expect he would have reacted differently if you had expanded / paraphrased what the tenure of those github issues was, at least so that the answer could stand on its own. But let's not speculate and just wait for the mod to arrive here.
    – rene
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 16:28
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    @rene My thinking was that the answer is really just "Upgrade to Node 14". The links were just the trail how I arrived at that conclusion in case it turned out to be wrong. There is no need to read them to understand the answer.
    – ehrencrona
    Commented Jul 13, 2020 at 16:44
  • Even if the answer is your last sentence, it does help to include the information as rene mentioned. If you had learned what in Node 13.x make this a problem, if would have been splendid if you had included that in a quote :)
    – Scratte
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 14:56

1 Answer 1

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As far as I understand I can't message the moderator to ask so I'm asking the question here instead. If that's not how it's supposed to work I apologize, but it would be helpful to learn what I'm doing wrong.

That's an option. The other option is to flag your deleted answer with a custom flag asking why it was deleted.

Now, why was it deleted?

I usually delete answers just saying "it's a bug in the tool/framework", linking to the issue.

Your solution is just:

upgrade to version 14

But you're not explaining/quoting in the answer if upgrading would really fix the error. How many times we have upgraded tools hoping that it would fix the error, and not only the error is not fixed, but upgrading introduces more incompatibilities, and now we have 2 problems ?

So I could have commented just that instead of deleting. I'll undelete it (another mod already beat me to it), but that would be really good if you could edit your post and prove that upgrading fixes the issue.

For instance digging in one of the links a contributor of this product states:

Node.js 13.5.0 seems to be broken. I tried 13.14.0 and 14.2.0. Both of them work. Please note you should use Node.js even versions for production. We support Node 10, 12, and 14.

That "we" seems an official "we". Reading that now I want to upgrade.

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    I usually delete answers just saying "it's a bug in the tool/framework", linking to the issue. --> doesn't this worth a downvote instead? deleting seems to much IMO (especially that there is an attempt to answer at the end with the upgrade)
    – Temani Afif
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:02
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    FWIW plenty of times this actually is the solution. I would recommend not to delete such answers because they are trying to provide a solution even if it might only be based on assumptions.
    – Dharman Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:03
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    Upgrading can do more harm than good, unless a very good & specific reason is provided. We don't want approximative answers. But as I said in my answer, deleting was too hard in that case because, yes there's an attempt. There are a lot of answers just stating "it's a bug". Those need to go.
    – Jean-François Fabre Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:03
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    @TemaniAfif who said I didn't downvote?
    – Jean-François Fabre Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:05
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    I meant only downvote ... Upgrading can do more harm than good, unless a very good & specific reason is provided. We don't want approximative answers. --> SO is plenty of approximative answers that works in many cases and get upvotes. I am also against them but they can be helpful so they are still valid answers. Sometimes you click on a button (you don't know why) and the code start working (you still don't know why but it's ok)
    – Temani Afif
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:08
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    "Sometimes you click on a button (you don't know why)": probably what happened to me when I clicked "delete"
    – Jean-François Fabre Mod
    Commented Jul 14, 2020 at 15:08

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