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A while ago, I asked a question on Super User related to spoofing Caller IDs. The question was down voted and closed. It may be deleted (I don't know because I can't find it).

I need to reference the question, but I'm having trouble locating it. I need to reference it because it has some technical information I need (like Telco Protocols and Incoming vs Outgoing PBX requirements and behaviors).

I've tried searching on Super User with user:xxx caller id and user:xxx pbx with no joy. I also cannot get Google to return the result.

Question: How do I search for the closed (and possibly deleted) question within the Stack Exchange network?

For completeness, I am a Stack Overflow power user. I can see deleted questions, so I know they are available.

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    The highest concentration of users most knowledgable about SE is at Meta Stack Exchange, not here... just a thought.
    – user79865
    Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 22:06
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    @2mkgz - Meta is a miserable place. Half the users think you have an agenda (like getting the question reopened). The other half want to bikeshed and provide their opinion on the matter, or argue about the question they thought you should have asked. For example, someone will want to engage in why I would want to do it, and how dumb an idea it is. Anymore, I just rather avoid the place altogether like rat infested neighborhoods where drugs and prostitution run unchecked.
    – user72479
    Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 22:14
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    By the way, I'm speaking from experience. Here's a perfect example: Does Stack Overflow or Meta have a Killfile equivalent? So please don't think I have no idea what I am talking about.
    – user72479
    Commented Apr 29, 2015 at 22:16
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    I am going to send this to our meta since you have strong objections about MSE and MSO.
    – jonsca Mod
    Commented Apr 30, 2015 at 1:00
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    @jww I know what you mean...
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented May 1, 2015 at 2:24

2 Answers 2

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  1. If the question was posted no more than 60 days ago, it will be present in the list of deleted questions at the bottom of your questions list.

  2. If it is older than 60 days, you may still be able to find it from the reputation tab. Check "show removed posts" at the bottom, then look for reputation changes associated with the post (downvotes, or refund of points at deletion). The tab will show you the post title next to reputation change, even if you don't have 10K required to access a deleted post.

  3. Super User has a chatroom Ask a Super User Moderator. You can ask a mod there to find the question for you: they can see the list of all your questions, and can also search specifically for your deleted posts via user:173513 deleted:1.

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    Deleted:1 isn't available to regular users, only Moderators. A better shorthand would be user:me
    – Sathyajith Bhat Mod
    Commented May 3, 2015 at 14:38
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    The sentence begins with "You can ask a mod there to find the question for you: they can..."
    – user79865
    Commented May 3, 2015 at 16:04
  • @SathyajithBhat Actually regular users with at least 10k reputation points can use deleted:1, too. The difference is that it only returns their own posts - in this case, this seems to be what the OP is asking about.
    – Martin
    Commented May 5, 2019 at 7:08
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The solutions that have already been suggested are good ones. If a post was not too old, you can look at deleted recent questions in your profile. If you are a 10k+ user you can find all your deleted posts by searching for deleted:1 and you can refine that search query with modifiers and keywords.

If you are below 10k and the post is older then 60 days, you could try also using SEDE. This will only help sometimes - depending on the stuff you remember about the post.

Data explorer contains a table called PostsWithDeleted. However, only some of the data about the posts available there. To be more specific, the data left for deleted posts are the data marked by 1 in the relevant part of Database schema documentation for the public data dump and SEDE. They are Id, PostTypeId (1=question,2=answer), ParentId (for answers), CreationDate, DeletionDate, Score, Tags, ClosedDate. Notice that no data about the poster are kept.

So if you remember some of that information - for example, that it had many answers, or approximate time when you posted the question - you could be able to get a list of links to deleted questions that fulfill the search criteria. You can then go through them one by one - and you'll be able to see those ones that you are allowed to see. (I.e., all questions if you are 10k+ user, your own questions otherwise.)

Here is an example of a question on this site which was deleted: Favorite Twitter Apps? (Wayback Machine version). So if you remember something about that question, you could be able to find it. Here are some examples of SEDE queries:

Depending on which data you use to filter the deleted questions, many similar queries can be created. If you remember at least some information about the deleted posts, there's a chance that you don't get too many results - and going through them one by one is doable.

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  • Since it seems that this question was motivated by a question posted on superuser, here are similar queries for the tags pbx and caller-id.
    – Martin
    Commented May 5, 2019 at 8:54

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