Why was this movie identification question deleted so quickly?

Question

A short while ago, we received this question asking for the name of a supernatural horror film. Obviously it's off-topic here, but it would have been on-topic over on SciFi.SE. I was halfway through typing a comment redirecting the OP there when the question was suddenly deleted "for reasons of moderation". So it's not like the OP deleted it themselves; the mods appear to have deliberately nuked it.

Why? If the question had just been closed, with a comment to the OP explaining that we don't accept ID questions and redirecting them to SFF, that would have been fair enough. I hate to engage in whataboutism, but every other ID question I've seen today (like this one) was handled that way: a quick close-vote and a comment explaining why.

So why did this question get treated differently?

Answer 1

Those questions are prone to get deleted any time once they're closed (and they're in turn getting closed as fast as possible). In fact often the avid users on this site vote to delete them themselves without involving the moderators. There is really no point in leaving those questions stay, since they won't ever get reopened. If they're getting deleted fast, rejoice!

Why this one was deleted faster than others? It's really a question of coincidence or circumstances. As a moderator I often just leave them be, closing them as fast as possible and maybe downvoting if they're particularly egregious. It will be taken care of by either other users delete-voting them or the auto-deletion system cleaning them up after a few days.

But other times I just delete them swiftly. For example when people upvote them. Or when they get edited further, bumping them into the reopen queue, or when tedious comment threads arise. Or, as in this case, when there's an occasional day where we get a bit of a little flood of them and I'm in the mood for cleanup.

Those questions are really comparable to comments in their ephemeral nature. Enjoy them as long as you can, but don't wonder but rejoice when they disappear. And don't try to understand the mysteries of why one was left and the other vanished. ;-) None of them ever stays longer than at most a few days anyway.

_{I since corrected the inequality you brought up, though.}