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I just encountered a post that was essentially a duplicate question posted as an answer to the question of which it is a duplicate. The question was US to UK visa or no visa for multiple visits.

The answer was deleted by moderator RoflcoptrException.

I don't disagree with deleting the answer, but I do wish the moderator could have posted a comment. Although the user posting the question is a new unregistered user of the sort who often never returns to the site, a gentle word of explanation would certainly increase the possibility that she would return to the site and perhaps become a valued member of the community.

Should moderators be deleting such answers without comment?

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  • Technically yes, adding a comment helps and we normally do, but there does appear to be a bug in the system. I've noticed it quite often - that sometimes when you delete an answer it pops up the usual 'reason for delete' auto text box which we can choose to comment with. Other times that doesn't appear and if you're not careful, it'll just delete it without a comment, and then you have to manually go find the post on the main site and add a comment, if you even noticed it. I assume that's all that's happened here, but I'll leave it to Rofl to respond.
    – Mark Mayo
    Apr 29, 2017 at 5:26
  • It's literally just done it to me again while deleting this answer - travel.stackexchange.com/questions/31516/… if you can see it - it didn't give me the option to auto-text it. However fortunately this time Gayot had already written something. (from the mod queue, not the review queue)
    – Mark Mayo
    Apr 29, 2017 at 5:30
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    @MarkMayo explained exactly what happened. I went back and added a comment.
    – RoflcoptrException
    Apr 29, 2017 at 8:18
  • +1, I share your view that we want people to enjoy their experience here, even the drive-by's.
    – Gayot Fow
    Apr 29, 2017 at 16:39

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Should moderators be deleting such answers without comment?

No definitely not. Rather, moderators should leave a trace when acting. It says so in the theory of moderation:

  1. Whenever possible, try to leave frequent comments on posts where you’ve taken (or considered taking) a moderator action, explaining the reasoning. This is important so that community members can learn the norms of the community and the moderation policies.

When deleting a post by acting on a moderator flag, the system does not add automatic comments as it does when deleting posts from the review queue. Moreover, once a post is deleted the flag is automatically dismissed. Hence it is easy to both lose track of the post and forget to comment on it. I guess this is what happened.

The solution I use is a greasemonkey script by Benjol allowing me to automatically add comments via customisable templates.

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