Community bot deletion of an answer. And network-wide 5 year account suspension??? what's up?

Question

This is a bit odd. Bear with me, I don't know all the facts.

This question - who is arming Talibans - got an answer which has been Community-deleted. So you need delete privileges (2K rep) to see it.

The odd bits:

• answer deletion by Community Bot
• actual answer content in revision history aren't really that offensive.
• comment stream is gone.

The answer didn't seem particularly offensive, maybe using the term "liberal globalism" to describe the root cause of Taliban getting weapons.

The central idea seemed to be Taliban <= weapons <= Pakistan <= China + USA(global liberalism) arm Pakistan .

The acrimonious debate started in the comments when the OP called the answerer "an Indian citizen" implying it showed dislike of Pakistan. I noted that he had little business in doing so - I used the term "nationality-doxxing", that it was name-calling of sorts and that the answer should not be dismissed out of hand and could be right. The answerer did not respond at the time.

If anything, the acrimony came from the OP, though he did not pursue it much. I did perceive some weird agenda as, right after posting this question, he now insisted he had an answer - which of course absolved Pakistan. Making it either a push question or a self-answer that the OP truly found while refuting this answer. Not sure. I suggested deletion, OP agreed.

Remember, India-Pakistan, like Israel-Palestine, tends to bring out passion and name-calling. Some users, otherwise somewhat reasonable and useful, totally lose it when confronting each other on these subjects.

Before you cast the first stone about this: think back on some of the pro and anti Trump debates and name calling on this site from 2017 to early 2021. Some high rep users, on both sides of it, really did not shine. I proudly remember being outed as "a censor", from someone sharing my views on Trump.

So now, these are my questions:

• is it customary for the Community Bot to delete answers?

• what triggered the Community Bot? Even the revisions don't show anything really offensive on the answer. The comments were deleted. I assume something in them triggered all the downvoting.

• I am not asking, nor need to know, the details of the answerer's misdeeds. Unlike my initial assumption, I now realize they're a seasoned user. But a network-wide suspension till Oct 17 '26??? I hope this is not the Community Bot having a bad day. Did the suspension happen for something else on the network entirely?

I get it that I missed something. The +2/-3 on the answer shows that. The -5 on the question does as well. So does the fact that the comment history was deleted - they usually persist on deleted answers and questions.

But I am still curious what got the Community Bot all riled up. The initial answer was just not that offensive.

And, hoping that all the facts were considered when a 5 year suspension was decided on.

Answer 1

The answer was flagged as rude/abusive by a moderator, that single flag automatically validates the post for the community user to take action. In this case, it's not the post content that's problematic per se, it's the user who posted it. The user is on a network-wide suspension but occasionally creates a new account to circumvent their suspension.

In this case, the decision to use the red flag was made to invoke some spam control measures which wouldn't be triggered with normal deletion.

As for the decision to delete outright, let me quote part of an answer from community manager Cesar M who got involved on a similar occasion last year (it's a bit of a selective quote taking the most relevant parts):

This question was posted by a user who has been trolling the network by creating sock-puppets and posting low-quality questions with an intention to get a reaction.

[...]

This person is not welcome to participate on our network and should not be posting questions or answers

[...]

The intention is to stop the harm and spending energy on a troll as fast as possible.