Why is my answer deleted using mod powers because the mod that asked it didn't like it?

Question

There was a question about StackOverflow productivity: Has Stack Overflow saved billions of dollars in programmer productivity? I answered it to the best of my ability. Rather than asking a question, or for claification the moderator closed it presumably because he didn't like the answer. That's an egregious use of an answer-close. Moderators should not being use their delete/censure button in replace of a down-vote. This answer isn't back pocket calculation. It uses all of the official data made mention and explains how that data should be adjusted and in which direction. I'm unsure at why the moderator things it's a "back pocket calculation" and I can't even ask him a question on it.

Please uncensure this post. You can't just delete it because the conclusion isn't of the same bias that you want, or because you want your question to ferment as you wait for more upvotes.

To make matters even worse, Sklivvz the mod is a paid employee of StackExchange. It's clear he is protecting his company and not acting in the best interests of an objective reduction of a broad grandiose valuation to something reasonable and obviously (imho) absurd.

Answer 1

FWIW there's a transcript here of a chat which hints at the kind of answer Sklivvz wanted:

for example take a group of programmers and split it in half, one half being denied the use of stack overflow. give them the same problems and measure KPIs

He's looking for published results available via Google Scholar, and/or experiments from an economist.

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I think that yours was a relatively low-quality answer.

Downvoting it instead of deleting it might have been sufficient; except that the question was (unusually) attracting 70,000 views from developers who are naive to the kind of answers expected on Skeptics, therefore the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory applied more strongly than usually.

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I might prefer it if moderators would refrain from moderating their own questions (to avoid any personal bias on their part, and to avoid complaints on your part).

For example it might have been better if Oddthinking instead Sklivvz had been the one who 'policed' this particular question. The end-result might have been similar though (other mods might have agreed with Sklivvz's decision to delete this answer)..

Answer 2

I would have deleted your answer as well if I were a moderator of the same reasons that were outlined by the others. This really is a research level question that someone could get a solid paper and maybe even a thesis out of and your answer is very hand-wavy and mildly editorialized (i.e. "Jeffs bureaucracy") in way that doesn't really add much to the answer.

At a minimum a solid answer to this question is going to need someone that can apply standard economic methodologies and justify their use since the value of stackoverflow.com is in the long tail of questions which means that you can't even assign the same economic value to each question since an answer to an especially hard question will have greater value than "How do I sort a list of strings in Python?"

Answer 3

This answer is primarily unreferenced. Here are the things that would need reference if I would support its undeletion:

• That $209 per question is nonsense (if referenced this would answer the question, but currently, it's begging the question)
• That the opportunity costs that you list are relevant
• That there is such a thing as "Jeff's bureaucracy"
• That Stack Overflow is a leviathan
• If someone answers a question and it doesn't help you, it just increases the cost of the site to industry and offers no value in exchange
• The 33% of questions that are unanswered cost the industry something
• Marx agrees
• in the latter case the difference has social value
• Let's not pretend like none of these questions are economically useless

Basically, you have used 2 references to support an answer full of speculation and unreferenced assertions. I would have deleted this answer also.

A comment asking for a reference was the most upvoted comment, so don't act like you didn't know the reason for criticism, or "presume" that the deletion was because Sklivz didn't like the answer.

You're right that he can't dictate the type of answer that comes out, but answers still have to satisfy the standards of evidence required by this site and by skeptics.

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Sklivz does disclose his employment at his profile page and can be seen if you hover over his avatar.