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Recently I had posted an answer on Islam Beta on the question What does 786 mean? It indeed is a good question with many detailed and substantial answers. Seeing the above answers with lots of references and explanation I just posted an answer that I suppose gave another logical thought to it.

My answer to the question was:
"This is something that is not acceptable in Islam, these are little steps towards Bida'h. Since our brothers have already done and said above about the references of the number and its existence. I would want to give a logical thinking to it as well.

Numbering Quranic verses has no significance

If we were to give each arabic letter a value then GOD and DOG are both same? Nauzobillah, so brother it is better not to fall more into the pit falls and practice authentic ways of sunnah. Jazakallah khair."

Now I would want people here to decide what was wrong in it and is it too little in content or off topic or bad enough to be deleted. I think it was a very rude decision from the moderators(goldPseudo) part to straight off delete it.
Just to add a bit more the answer also received few vote ups as well. Jazakallah.

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  • God and dog are English words. When you give each Arabic letter a numerical value, then those two words are not the same!
    – user54854
    Jun 16 at 22:58

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So, after reviewing this a little bit, I have two responses to your question.

First, to the question you have asked: moderators on a site are controlled by you all, the users of the site itself. When a moderator does an action that you disagree with, bringing it here (to the meta section) is EXACTLY the correct thing to do.

Now, if you feel strongly that a moderator is acting inappropriately in a consistent, potentially destructive way, users should contact the Stack Exchange Team by using the contact us form form at the bottom of the page. This is ONLY to be used in EXTREME situations, when privacy and discretion are of the utmost importance.

Your second unspoken question asked why your answer was deleted. My immediate reaction would be to guess that your answer (per what you posted above) simply did not answer the user's question adequately. Or really at all. The user was asking about the number's significance; your response tells him that using the number is disallowed. Your answer is incomplete at best -- it needs to answer the first part (the number's significance) before delving into the matters of the usage of the numerical stand-in.

That said, if you choose to edit your answer into something more complete, I suggest you flag the question and let a moderator know that you've improved your response.

Finally, just for completeness: there are three moderators on the site. You can also see who they are on the about page.

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  • I apologize if this is a bit curt; it was not meant to be. Rather, it was written rather quickly. I'll do my best to edit it into something a touch less brusque later, but I waned to apologize in advance.
    – Aarthi
    Oct 18, 2012 at 7:50
  • If you did not have time you should have perhaps waited a bit more to get yourself in a position where you could have written your answer as you wanted. Apart from that, I fail to understand WHAT was written so badly or incomplete that it needs to be removed? As I said before if you look at the answers above my post there you will find that it was discussed and so I simply avoided it what's wrong in that? You said my response says the number is haram? Where did I say that?
    – Atif Imran
    Oct 18, 2012 at 8:43
  • @AtifImran you are correct -- you never referred to "haram," and I have edited my answer accordingly to remove that. As for the first part of your questions, I will allow the moderators to answer that directly.
    – Aarthi
    Oct 18, 2012 at 8:49
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    @AtifImran I did not look at the answers "above" your post when I made my decision; moderators typically only judge individual posts as they come across our radar (e.g. via flags or through the review queue), so a post should be able to stand on its own merits or it risks being acted upon.
    – goldPseudo Mod
    Oct 18, 2012 at 14:53
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Looking through the question, and through your history, it seems like you're one of the users who slipped through the cracks.

As a community, we try to give newbies a gentle introduction to the site. So, welcome to the site! Answers here are generally expected to be authoritative, and to cite sources, such as verses of Qur'an, hadith, statements of scholars, etc. to back them up. Take a look at some of the top questions and answers by votes to get an idea of the kind of stuff we expect.

In this case, I agree that deleting your answer (on the implicit understanding that you know how the site operates -- which I'm not sure is a valid one) was a bit premature.

As a recent move, we have started deleting low-quality questions and answers (closed questions, mostly, and heavily down-voted answers), taking our cues from the Stack Exchange team.

In the future, please don't take the wrong steps, like:

  • Editing your answer to include WHY WAS MY POST DELETED? goldPseudo? at the top in capital letters
  • Post the same answer, again, with the same text, once it has been deleted
  • Take offense immediately if someone does something you don't like

We're usually available in the chat room, as well (you seem to have the required 20 rep for it) to answer any questions of this kind.

Also, for this particular case, your answer seemed more like a comment than a real, valid answer.

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  • the reputation required to talk in the chat room is 20.
    – مجاهد
    Oct 18, 2012 at 12:18

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