Folks,
There has been a murder. A question was just minding its business and it is now dead. What happened to it? "Who done it?"
There are no other clues. Just very mysterious.
Credit to Bozman for a dramatic way of asking a meta question! :-) But this is SERIOUS.
The question is here. It was posted by a supposedly new user who'd just joined the site. As far as I can see there is nothing wrong with the question as a question. The punctuation and grammar isn't wonderful, but it's not spam, offensive, or a duplicate, and there's nothing to suggest it's too broad or primarily opinion-based. But within 3 hours of being posted - with a neutral vote count, no VTCs, one answer, by me and currently only a single comment (from him, speaking to me) - the question was DELETED by the Community user!
WHY? I hope the members of this community have a right to understand the actions of the Community user.
Also, why was the deletion done in this way? Did whoever deleted the question (I believe this can only be done manually and by a moderator?) wish to preserve their anonymity, and if so, why?
The poster of the question also appears to have had their account deleted! They appear now only as 'user7422', but previously they had a username (something beginning with 'Triang') and a profile picture. There is now no user whose name begins with 'Triang'. Not only the question but the user's account has been deleted.
I am deeply shocked. Is this the way we are now treating new users at the Puzzling Stack Exchange? I'm posting this question in case there's an innocent explanation, but if not, this is the final straw - I'm definitely leaving this site for good.