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READ: THIS DOES NOT WORK. It has been broken by improvements in privilege enforcement. Sorry!

The only reason I haven't deleted this post is that it would be particularly cruel for people seeking a way to view deleted posts to be met with another inexplicably deleted question.

The original post is included below only for reference.

Screenshot

About

Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer is a user script which allows any users with at least 500 reputation to see most deleted posts, if they have a link to them. It will display the post's title, content, vote counts and comments. If the post has been edited at least once, it will also display the author and editor.

You can try this out with a deleted question and answer of mine on meta.stackoverflow.com, then consider taking a look at the Popular Deleted Questions list on meta.

Caveats

You will only be able to see answers when you use their permalink, or you voted on them answer before they were deleted. This will fail for locked questions, but should work for all others.

This script relies on certain bugs and design features that are likely to be changed at some point. I'll accommodate these changes if it's possible, but it may not be.

License

Released under the MIT Open Source License.

Installation

Click here to install Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer.

Platforms

Contact

Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer was written me, Jeremy Banks. You can just leave feedback in the comments, but if you would like to email me my address is in my profile.

Code

Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer was written in CoffeeScript. The source file is available here.

Oh, and...

...if any Stack Exchange folks would prefer that this be deleted, I won't object.

Improve this question
13
  • Really cool idea. Unfortunately I can't get it to work for this question.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jul 25, 2011 at 3:37
  • ...but this one works.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Jul 25, 2011 at 3:39
  • @GeorgeEdison: I've realized that it fails on locked questions because the edit page it relies on is unavailable for them.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Oct 13, 2011 at 6:49
  • 3
    The next build fixes several bugs with regards to editing permissions. Unfortunately the one you're exploiting here is among them. Sorry :)
    – balpha Staff♦
    Commented Oct 15, 2011 at 18:01
  • @balpha: Oh, that's good to hear. I thought the current behaviour was a bit silly. :P I guess I now have an incentive to get to 10k on meta.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Oct 15, 2011 at 18:04
  • @balpha: The change didn't have the effect you described, it seems like 500+ rep users can still do this. See the meta thread.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Oct 19, 2011 at 17:58
  • Yep; I saw your update. Will look.
    – balpha Staff♦
    Commented Oct 19, 2011 at 19:32
  • Really cool idea. I would test it in Greasemonkey, but don't have the required rep. points. :(
    – rdrgrtz
    Commented Nov 13, 2011 at 23:11
  • That's genius. Though with the current approach, you might want to check whether the user is logged in first. Anonymous users (probably low-rep too?) just get a "sod off" note instead of a forced CAPTCHA when they trip the spam filter.
    – a cat
    Commented Apr 26, 2012 at 15:46
  • 1
    Whatever happened to the version that simply posts an empty answer to force an error? 'cause I have that installed from god-knows-when and it still works.
    – a cat
    Commented Sep 20, 2013 at 14:11
  • 1
    @lunboks I didn't remember ever posting that here, I think I only mentioned it in chat or something. I thought they had fixed that; if not I might update this post later to include that version.
    – Jeremy
    Commented Sep 20, 2013 at 14:39
  • @JeremyBanks No idea where I got it from, but yeah, as I said it still works. Even better than it used to because empty posts no longer trip the spam filter, which means you don't have to solve a CAPTCHA every time.
    – a cat
    Commented Sep 20, 2013 at 15:12
  • 1
    Even if it worked, you’d still need the URL. :-(
    – Synetech
    Commented Jan 1, 2014 at 21:53

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