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While these comments are based on the specific incident described in my previous post involving the deletion of a C# forum question posed by Mahmaoodof, and answered by me, they are meant to be a general comment with broader scope ... on the process involved in removing messages.
What follows is not a complaint, but a query.
Scenario:
1. CP member "X" posts a question on a Q&A forum (like C#) involving programmatic access to an application's internal state.
2. CP member "Y," with platinum rep as "authority," posts a carefully written answer specifying the requirements for (remote) accessing internal state (such as an official API from the application creator), qualifying the answer by the fact that the application provider may not wish to allow such access, and that the information sought can be easily obtained/exported in the running program ... if you are a licensed user ...
3. CP member "Z," with platinum rep as "authority" reports the OP to moderation.
4. the OP, and answer, are removed ... in this I assume by CP staff, not member "Z" who, I assume, just reported it.
5. strange "traces" of both the OP, and the answer remain behind on CP, even though they cannot be found via Google search, or CP Search (see ProgramFox's comment on the thread below for a reference to a CP page with part of my response that I would never have found via search).
Discussion:
1. There are many questions on Q&A involving programmatic control, and interaction with, other applications from .NET, from Excel, to Word, to DataBases, etc. On a broader level, there are many questions involving the act of launching another program (even ones without a .NET api) from within a .NET app
2. There is a long history of the old OLE automation process, to launch and/or interact with applications from earlier MS platforms: thankfully, now a dinosaur for most of us. The days of SendKeys are behind most of us, praise be 
Issues for discussion:
1. if a post on Q&A is judged relevant, and answered by someone with some level of CP reputation:
a. should the post be summarily removed without some notice to the person who answered the question.
b. should "fragments" of the OP and answer be preserved on CP in places that cannot be found by searching ?
Personal conclusion (again, written not as a complaint)
1. if this instance discussed here, as an example, does represent the process resulting from CP's "official" norms, then I believe it's yet another dis-incentive to carefully answer questions, and, prior to answering them (as I did in this particular case) to look at the history of the OP's author on CP to see ... in a "borderline" case ... if they have any history of message removal, being reported, etc.
2. the fact that Q&A forums have a long history of seeing many intelligent potential responders in effect "driven away" by the frequent "static," the argumentative and off-topic comments, emitted by a certain cadre of "reputation cash-cows," imho increases the importance of any other issue, like this one, that may serve as a dis-incentive to constructive participation.
Conclusion:
I've written on this forum at length, about Q&A issues, expressed my sense of loss that someone of the stature of Pete O'Hanlon should withdraw from participating in Q&A because of certain individual's behavior (Pete commented on this in this forum).
And, I've written about what I perceive as the loss of distinction between general-level discussion forums, and Q&A.
Yet, I cannot bring myself to actually remove anyone else's messages, or comments ... I just report them
Suggestions: ... Where's the "beat-the-dead-horse animated emoticon" when you need it
1. allow members of a certain rank to move questions from general discussion forums to Q&A forums.
2. before removing a Q&A message with an answer (particularly an answer with a certain rep level as authority ?) that has not been substantially down-voted, or reported as spam, or abuse, notify the person who answered the question, let them state why they think it's valid.
3. if a message, and its answers is removed, remove the "whole banana:" don't leave fragments of the OP and answer hanging around on CP.
4. if a substantitive clarifying question has been made as a comment on a Q&A OP, by a CP member with a certain level as authority, and no response has been made by the OP in 24 hours, "freeze" further comments or adding of solutions. This will weed out many stupid questions the OP has no "stake" in. Yes, I know, this is a very sticky one, because we have so many psychics on CP
5. Consider not automatically awarding ten points to every solution given to a Q&A question; award them points based on their being voted on, and/or accepted. Yes, I believe the Q&A "rep cash-cows"really are in danger of very high cholesterol levels
constructively, I hope, Bill
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection." Edward Sapir, 1929
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Bill, I noticed you have not had a whole lot of replies to this, so I will throw in one piece of information that should answer part of your post.
CodeProject made some changes to the Privileges policy a couple of months ago. Regular members (like you and I) used to be able to delete Questions and Answers once we reached certain levels, but that was changed to only allow deletion by certain member roles (Admin, Protector, etc.). At the same time, they lowered the number of reports needed to remove a Question or Answer from five to three. Since you cannot report Questions and Answers until you reach certain levels, it seems like the right strategy to me.
So, armed with the information from the Revisions page ProgramFox linked to, I believe the Question you posted an Answer to was reported by three members and the system automatically removed it from view. In other words, it was not removed by a lone member or by the CP staff.
I don't know the timeline of these events, but it is possible that two of the members had already reported the Question before you posted your answer.
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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BillWoodruff wrote: 5. Consider not automatically awarding ten points to every solution given to a
Q&A question; award them points based on their being voted on, and/or
accepted. Yes, I believe the Q&A "rep cash-cows"really are in danger of very
high cholesterol levels
I like this suggestion, there are a lot of not-really-helpful-answers and some "Yiiiihhhaaa I have reached XXXX rep points" around there.
M.D.V. 
If something has a solution... Why do we have to worry about?. If it has no solution... For what reason do we have to worry about?
Help me to understand what I'm saying, and I'll explain it better to you
Rating helpful answers is nice, but saying thanks can be even nicer.
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I don't know why this C# forum question, and my answer was removed: [^].
imho, neither the question, nor my response, was blatantly spammish, or evil.
Perhaps the OP removed it ? I checked the Spam/Abuse Watch forum, didn't see any report on the OP.
It's no big deal to me the question, and answer, are gone: mox nix.
What I find curious is that via Google Search [^], you can still find the original question at this CP link [^].
Google, I believe, does not cache CP Q&A pages, so this is not a cached page.
curiously, Bill
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection." Edward Sapir, 1929
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Thanks, ProgramFox,
I would have never found that link unless you had drawn my attention to it; perhaps it was created after my Google search ?
I will make a further post regarding my concerns for the way this particular question was removed, and what "remains" of it.
yours, Bill
“Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection." Edward Sapir, 1929
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Thanks PF. I did not know you could get to this information and it even works for Questions that have no revisions besides the initial post.
When I see this information about who has reported on a question, forcing it to be closed, I have noticed that it does not seem to list all the reporting members - it looks like it skips one of them.
Or maybe it is because (in the case of this particular question), 2 members reported it as Off-topic and a 3rd member reported it as something else and that is not displayed.
So, I have the following question to the CP guys:
- I know it takes 3 reports to close a Question or Answer, but do these have to be reports of the same category?
- Is it a bug that only 2 reporting members are listed in the revisions page[^] of the Question in question (  )?
[Perhaps I should have posted this separately, but I think it is just slightly off-topic from the original thread.]
Soren Madsen
"When you don't know what you're doing it's best to do it quickly" - Jase #DuckDynasty
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SoMad wrote: Or maybe it is because (in the case of this particular question), 2 members reported it as Off-topic and a 3rd member reported it as something else and that is not displayed.
Yes: once I reported an article (that's not a question, but perhaps it's the same) as "Unclear or Incomplete", and my report was the 5th, and the article was closed. But the message was "Closed because this article is too poor to be published. Reported by ...". I saw 4 names, and I was the 5th, but I wasn't listed because I reported the article as "Unclear or Incomplete" and not as "Extremely poor quality".
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..Or in other words, just rooting out very old stuff I am not really interested in anymore. This, much to my surprise caused my points to go down. wow. really? If that is a true feature can it maybe have some sort of filter like age or something without lowering the points totals ....??? (fairly new member so this may have been discussed before, didn't search all that much for possible previous answer sorry).
vbmike
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When you bookmark something you are telling our system "I think this is important" and for that we give you, and the bookmarkee, points. If you change you mind and unbookmark then we remove the points since you're no longer indicating that you want to mark the item as important enough to save.
The points you earn for bookmarking are categorised as "Organiser" for a reason 
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Ok, lesson learned. Thank you.
vbmike
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I know that this is an old post, but I found it before I posted the same question (I was clearing out some old bookmarks to stuff that isn't relevant to me and I saw my rep go down)
Whilst I am happy to lose my rep points as I no longer want the link, I do think it is a bit unfair on the bookmarkee to lose the points they gained as the article may still be of worth to others.
Also if I re-upload code samples will I lose points 
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Reiss wrote: I do think it is a bit unfair on the bookmarkee to lose the points
So what happens if someone accidentally bookmarks and then undoes that operation?
In situations like this there's the perfect-way-for-a-given-situation and there's the logical-way-that-disregards-some-edge-cases. Unfortunately the consistent, logical way usually results in less confusion and complaints.
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Imagine keeping track on your points if it wasn't connected to your current bookmarks.
It would also be an extremely easy but boring way to boost your points, just add and remove 1000 bookmarks.
Be excellent to each other. And... PARTY ON, DUDES!
Abraham Lincoln
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Not really interested in boosting for sake of boosting. All I wanted to do was weed out stuff that was not relevant anymore. For me it is being better organised that way...oh well.
vbmike
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Is anybody else not receiving the "Insider News"? I haven't gotten one since Friday, 6/14. My days are not the same without the news 
Hogan
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Same issue here. I've had to view the last two online:
17 June 2013[^]
18 June 2013[^]
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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We found the issue! We've improved (Sorry, "improved") the content filtering to ensure you only see what you're interested in and we were way too agressive with the filtering.
cheers,
Chris Maunder
The Code Project | Co-founder
Microsoft C++ MVP
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Thanks for looking into this!
Hogan
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Think you might have to look again.
Didn't get today's mail (unless it still has to be send but normally it's in my inbox by the time I get to work (2 hours ago))
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Same as Tom - no Insider News today. None since Friday.
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Same here - today's newsletter hasn't arrived.
"These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined."
- Homer
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Yep, I responded too quickly. Still no email for me either 
Hogan
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No e-mail since Friday for me either.
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