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I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. Some within a few minutes.

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.

I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. [NB: See update below.] Some within a few minutes.

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.

Update: There has been some criticism of the numbers in this answer - particularly the claim above "Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours."

My initial statement was from a quick and dirty analysis. Andrew has performed a more systematic one, based on the flags that he has raised, which suggests my claim is false. Only being questions that Andrew flagged is its own source of bias, so I wanted to do another analysis.

Today, I tried to do a systematic one based on all deleted answers, using the Stack Exchange Data Explorer. However, my assumption that I could see the deleted questions if I was logged into the Data Explorer as a mod was false.

So, instead I ran a query of the newest deleted questions that reference the holocaust and manually walked through it until I got bored, which turned out to be 16 questions. [Disclaimer: Not having a fixed target before collecting the data is a potential source of bias.]

I stopped the clock when the question was closed (if it was closed before it was deleted). I bolded the ones higher than 2 hours.

• 93 minutes
• 167 minutes
• 1 minute
• 172 minutes
• 2 minutes
• 211 minutes
• 2876 minutes [Exception mentioned in the initial claim.]
• 212 minutes
• 110 minutes
• 11 minutes
• 34 minutes
• 203 minutes
• 33 minutes
• 29 minutes
• Self Deleted, not trolling
• 43 minutes
• 61 minutes

Based on the number of bolded entries, I agree that Andrew's criticism of my "2 hours" claim is fair and correct; I thank him for challenging me on this. I withdraw the claim, and apologise for being misleading.

This is a feature-request. It is worth understanding the status quo.

First, we should understand that genuine, good faith, questions about the Holocaust are not taboo here. We have many examples, including at least one that goes directly to the claims of holocaust deniers:

• Has the Holocaust been exaggerated?

That said, Skeptics.SE is not alone in the SE network of regularly (once or twice per month) receiving bad faith questions from Holocaust denialist trolls trying to advance their political positions.

I personally find Holocaust denialism rather offensive. I appreciate that many people find it deeply offensive and upsetting. I am keen to strike the right balance: we allow light to shine on the question, while not giving oxygen to the anti-semitic trolls.

Users with sufficient rep can see deleted questions about the Holocaust. [citation needed]

Some were deleted by mods. Some were automatically deleted by users flagging the questions. Some were deleted by automated systems, based on the users behaviour on this and other sites.

I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. Some within a few minutes. [citation needed]

This one was an exception. It took 48 hours to be deleted by a background process, even though it had an upvoted answer; I don't understand why it was deleted, but I imagine it was based on the OP's behaviour on other sites.

So, the critical question is: does a question once or twice a month surviving for less than a couple of hours give sufficient oxygen to the trolls to warrant adding a new feature to let mods decide whether a controversial question should be seen at all?

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.

This is a feature-request. It is worth understanding the status quo.

First, we should understand that genuine, good faith, questions about the Holocaust are not taboo here. We have many examples, including at least one that goes directly to the claims of holocaust deniers:

• Has the Holocaust been exaggerated?

That said, Skeptics.SE is not alone in the SE network of regularly (once or twice per month) receiving bad faith questions from Holocaust denialist trolls trying to advance their political positions.

I personally find Holocaust denialism rather offensive. I appreciate that many people find it deeply offensive and upsetting. I am keen to strike the right balance: we allow light to shine on the question, while not giving oxygen to the anti-semitic trolls.

Users with sufficient rep can see deleted questions about the Holocaust.

Some were deleted by mods. Some were automatically deleted by users flagging the questions. Some were deleted by automated systems, based on the users behaviour on this and other sites.

I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. Some within a few minutes.

This one was an exception. It took 48 hours to be deleted by a background process, even though it had an upvoted answer; I don't understand why it was deleted, but I imagine it was based on the OP's behaviour on other sites.

So, the critical question is: does a question once or twice a month surviving for less than a couple of hours give sufficient oxygen to the trolls to warrant adding a new feature to let mods decide whether a controversial question should be seen at all?

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.

This is a feature-request. It is worth understanding the status quo.

First, we should understand that genuine, good faith, questions about the Holocaust are not taboo here. We have many examples, including at least one that goes directly to the claims of holocaust deniers:

• Has the Holocaust been exaggerated?

That said, Skeptics.SE is not alone in the SE network of regularly (once or twice per month) receiving bad faith questions from Holocaust denialist trolls trying to advance their political positions.

I personally find Holocaust denialism rather offensive. I appreciate that many people find it deeply offensive and upsetting. I am keen to strike the right balance: we allow light to shine on the question, while not giving oxygen to the anti-semitic trolls.

Users with sufficient rep can see deleted questions about the Holocaust.

Some were deleted by mods. Some were automatically deleted by users flagging the questions. Some were deleted by automated systems, based on the users behaviour on this and other sites.

I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. Some within a few minutes.

This one was an exception. It took 48 hours to be deleted by a background process, even though it had an upvoted answer; I don't understand why it was deleted, but I imagine it was based on the OP's behaviour on other sites.

So, the critical question is: does a question once or twice a month surviving for less than a couple of hours give sufficient oxygen to the trolls to warrant adding a new feature to let mods decide whether a controversial question should be seen at all?

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.

This is a feature-request. It is worth understanding the status quo.

First, we should understand that genuine, good faith, questions about the Holocaust are not taboo here. We have many examples, including at least one that goes directly to the claims of holocaust deniers:

• Has the Holocaust been exaggerated?

That said, Skeptics.SE is not alone in the SE network of regularly (once or twice per month) receiving bad faith questions from Holocaust denialist trolls trying to advance their political positions.

I personally find Holocaust denialism rather offensive. I appreciate that many people find it deeply offensive and upsetting. I am keen to strike the right balance: we allow light to shine on the question, while not giving oxygen to the anti-semitic trolls.

Users with sufficient rep can see deleted questions about the Holocaust. [citation needed]

Some were deleted by mods. Some were automatically deleted by users flagging the questions. Some were deleted by automated systems, based on the users behaviour on this and other sites.

I looked at a sample. Virtually all of them were deleted within two hours of being posted. Some within a few minutes. [citation needed]

This one was an exception. It took 48 hours to be deleted by a background process, even though it had an upvoted answer; I don't understand why it was deleted, but I imagine it was based on the OP's behaviour on other sites.

So, the critical question is: does a question once or twice a month surviving for less than a couple of hours give sufficient oxygen to the trolls to warrant adding a new feature to let mods decide whether a controversial question should be seen at all?

I'm leaning towards No, but this is a result of weighing up of several factors, and I completely understand some people would conclude the answer was Yes.