What is going on with this highly voted, now deleted answer?

Question

So I have a well recieved (+106/-0) answer on Why do some Christians believe it is moral to be a homosexual? that is undergoing some confusing activity.

1. 2 days ago it got a "citation required" notice and the first part of it was deleted by @KenGraham. No comment was left with any specifics.

2. 1 day ago that notice was removed and the deletion reverted by @curiousdanni with no comment. After that, I noticed the activity and added a comment asking what was going on. I also added a reference to the piece that had been deleted and then reverted to try to help out whatever problem was being hashed out.

3. Today the entire answer was deleted by @PeterTurner and a comment left stating "@mxy it's kinda lame that we're revisiting this so long after it was posted, this question probably wouldn't fly as written today and this is a good answer, don't get me wrong. The second half of the answer doesn't have the requisite attribution which is the only thing we could use as leverage against folks who flag that this is just your opinion. "

I'm not super happy with the degree of communication around this, and that I have to come here to Meta instead of using comments for improvement since the answer was deleted with basically no notice. if a lot of people are really flagging this answer then why does it not have any downvotes? Why not post notice it and let me add references instead of just up and deleting a more than +100 voted answer, overriding the clear sentiment of the community?

I'd be happy to add some more references if folks would like to be more clear about what parts could use more support. I'd appreciate if it would be undeleted in the meantime so it can be collaborated on. I'd also like more communication from the mod team and not just a bunch of random actions taken without any explanation to the post author.

Answer 1

Hi mxyzplk, very sorry about all of this.

So the mods here received a message from Stack Exchange staff that there had been a Code of Conduct complaint about your answer. Unfortunately there was a mixup in the explanation of that to us, and the wrong paragraph was quoted. This is why Ken deleted a paragraph and then I reverted it.

The mixup was cleared up, and we understood the issue. The specific issue concerned the comparison between homosexuality and gambling or alcohol addictions, which was not particularly apt as a homosexual sexual orientation would not be regarded as an addiction by anyone. (At least I hope not.) But those specific examples are not essential to the point you were making, so I didn't think we needed to purge the whole post or even that paragraph, we could edit it to clearly explain your point without making imprecise comparisons.

I said I'd make the edit, but I couldn't get to it immediately. In the mean time Peter deleted the post temporarily. I have now made an edit I think brings it completely above board while also still conveying the point you were making, which I thought was a very good one, and I hope you will see it as supporting what you were trying to say. I've undeleted your post, and hopefully this will be the end of it. Please take a look at the edit I made, and of course feel free to edit it further.

Again, very sorry for how this happened, and the poor communication all round. If you would like more of an explanation, I can ask the SE staff member to come and explain the CoC complaint they received in more detail.

Answer 2

mxyzplk,

Sorry for the mix up regarding your response. This was new territory for us in this domain regarding the CoC complaints. It took time to evaluate what was really going on with it.

As curiousdanni pointed out the initial information with regarding the wrong paragraph.

I trust the edits are okay to everyone’s satisfaction. And thank you for your patience in the matter.

We regret this mix up.

Pax.

Answer 3

I know it's a highly voted answer, it's also from the beginning of the site when we were a little more free-wheeling with Q&A and I tried to evaluate it using today's criteria. Where we pretty much delete everything.

So instead of evaluating it from the standpoint of an answer that received a CoC complaint (Which I can't honestly see the reasoning in, I think you were perfectly generous toward people who read tolerance of homosexual proclivity AND homosexual acts into the Bible and Christian faith), I evaluated it from the standpoint of an answer that just wouldn't fly for lack of references in the type of question (i.e. a survey / Biblical Basis) that really relies on lots of references for it to even exist.

I'm not sure that this question should even be kept on the site and I'd be likely to close it if anyone else agreed. It should be "What is the Biblical Basis for tolerance of homosexual acts" or a denomination survey that asks which Christians are seen as pro-homosexual and what is their reasoning.

Otherwise, you wind up with a collection of random arguments that could be pulled from anywhere.

I don't know, it's nitpicking, but I don't think it's a good question, given the way we whittled things down, not to say yours isn't a good an insightful answer, which it definitely is.