Why was my accepted answer deleted?

Question

My answer to this question about whaling was deleted by three users. At that moment, it had 27 upvotes, 36 downvotes, and was the accepted answer.

It's unclear to me why this answer was deleted.

As one of the moderators yesterday wrote in another meta post about an unrelated answer:

Answers get deleted for being wildly off-topic, total gibberish, or outright offensive.

None of those apply to my answer. So why was my answer deleted?

I certainly hope it was not deleted because it didn't confirm to the mainstream opinion on this site. If that be the case, it would be very bad, as per the same moderator:

What Answers do not get deleted for is being wrong, let alone potentially wrong. [..]

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If no valid reason can be given, please undelete my answer.

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[Full text of my original answer, for those who cannot see deleted answers:]

What is the fundamental difference between catching whales and hunting other animals?

Culture

There is no fundamental difference between whales, and e.g. dogs or cows. All are mammals; Some people eat some (or all) of those, while some other people consider it immoral to eat some (or all) of those.

Therefore, the main difference is culture. Many people are used to eat beef, while they are not used to eating whale meat.

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Update

Undelete flag was denied:

declined - Moderators will not override community consensus unless the answer was substantially edited or the delete-votes were very clearly abusive. This doesn't seem to be the case here.

Despite every answer, plus two moderators in comments, stating that the answer should not be deleted, they still do not undelete.

Compare that with the speed that this answer was undeleted.

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Answer 1

Update: just noting some developments...

• The disputed answer was deleted again roughly two weeks ago (beginning of March 2020); after gaining more experience on this site, I honestly don't think it's worth fighting over that quality of an answer, so I'm not voting to undelete again.

• Something that I had missed the first time around (well, because it happened roughly two weeks later than the rest of my post below) was this comment of mod Philipp:

  the author of the question reverted it to a version which is nothing but a rant against "non Japanese". If the author considers this the version they want, then it must be closed as "promote or discredit a specific political cause, group or politician". I reverted it to the last version which was acceptable. I am now locking this question. We are forced to babysit this question for 20 days now, and it is becoming an unacceptable strain on the resources of the volunteer moderation team. – Philipp ♦ Jul 23 '19 at 13:05

• The question was eventually unlocked... after a bit more than three months:

So yeah, undeleting a cheesy accepted answer to entertain a question[-asker] like that is doubly not worth the hassle.

My original answer below:

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It think it's a poor answer worth downvoting and I agree with the comment that said

(+38) Downvoted. Literally everyone I've ever talked with on this subject complained about two reasons: 1. whales are endangered and 2. whales are incredibly intelligent mammals. These are objective facts, not some cultural relativism – Davor Jul 4 at 14:30

And also with

(+18) -1, this is like answering the question "why is the death penalty allowed/forbidden in some countries?" with "culture". Yes, technically that is correct. But it's a non-answer you can give for everything and that implies that there essentially is no reason, stated or otherwise. And that is simply not true. Whaling stopped for reasons. Whaling is opposed today for reasons. Culture.... "Why did the Roman Empire fall?" "Culture!" Technically true, but ultimately pointless. – Kakturus Jul 5 at 8:52

On the other hand if the OP thinks it's the right answer... it speaks volumes for the OP. The question ends up with

I'm looking for the stated reasons from environmental groups and governments that have signed the International Convention for the Regulation of Whaling.

But none of that is detailed in the accepted answer. So I think the question is rather off-topic to begin with... i.e. smacks of someone accepting an answer that echoes his prior opinion on the matter.

A poor answer to a poor question is about par for this site, so I've undeleted Sjoerd's answer (3rd vote).

Answer 2

If I handled a deletion flag on that answer, I would probably decline the flag. In fact, there was a VLQ flag on that answer which got declined by a different moderator. That answer was deleted because members of the community voted to delete it.

With that in mind, there are a couple of reasons I can think of why someone might want to delete that answer.

1. "People oppose whale hunting because of culture" reads a bit like "people oppose whale hunting because they oppose whale hunting." It might be that the real thing people want to know is why the culture is the way it is, and your question barely scratches the surface of that.
2. You don't really give us much reason to assume that your answer is correct. It appears to be based on some very loose assumptions, and you haven't provided us with anything to prove that those assumptions are correct(sources are useful for this purpose). Theoretically, the reaction to this should be downvotes, but if your answer is getting enough negative attention to receive a lot of downvotes, it makes sense that you'll get users who receive your answer so poorly that they decide to vote to delete instead.

By the way, in case you're wondering, yes, you should feel discouraged to post things that are likely to get downvotes. That's kinda the point of downvotes.

Answer 3

Many people are used to eat beef

How do you use people to eat beef? You may think that this isn't total gibberish, but some of us disagree with you. In general when I see nonsense answers reject grammar correction edits that aren't marginal, I vote to delete.

There is also the reason why this answer was accepted. It was accepted because the ranterasker happened to agree with it. It fit his rant. For the same reason, we don't encourage rant questions, we shouldn't encourage rant validation. My opinion remains that not only should that answer have been deleted, but the whole question should have been closed for ranting.