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<!-- excerpt: A user script allowing users to view deleted questions if they have a link to them. -->

## Screenshot

![][1]

## About

Have you ever followed a link to an old question only to find it deleted? I have, and it very disappointing. Thanks to [the way deleted posts can be edited](http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99593/how-is-the-editing-of-deleted-posts-supposed-to-behave), you can now be a little bit less disappointed!

The *Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer* is a user script that will activate when you visit a deleted question. It will attempt to retrieve the question's content for you, as well as the author and most recent editor if possible. (It does **not retrieve answers**, just the original question.)

This will fail for locked questions, because the edit page this relies on is unavailable for them.

You can test this with [a deleted question of mine on meta.stackoverflow.com][2], then consider taking a look at the [Popular Deleted Questions list][3] on meta.

### License

Released under the [MIT Open Source License][4].

### Installation

[**Click here**][5] to install the the *Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer*.

### Platform

The script will run on Chrome or on Firefox with with the [Greasemonkey](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/) plugin.

## Contact

The *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

The *Stack Exchange Deleted Question Viewer* was written in [CoffeeScript](http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/). The source file is available [here][6]. Be warned that it's a bit of a mess.


  [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/0JQIH.png
  [2]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/99629/how-do-i-know-if-this-question-is-a-test
  [3]: http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/73455/popular-deleted-questions-list
  [4]: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php
  [5]: https://raw.github.com/gist/9e1773d770e96d7338c8/b66d21ba129f11c3d1a47439328da84c8fd8c8cd/deleted.user.js
  [6]: https://raw.github.com/gist/9e1773d770e96d7338c8/5bedbc25452d84462a0cba63224293377032bda8/deleted.user.coffee