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This question was inspired by this deleted answer: https://philosophy.stackexchange.com/a/59184/4555 . The answer was both correct, and sourced with a link. In fact, it was better than the existing answers. I was actually planning on providing the same answer, until I saw it had already been deleted twice.

In this case it was also a new contributor. It was deleted, without comment, by a moderator (@GeoffreyThomas). This is not a good way to be welcoming to new members. In my opinion, downvotes, helpful comments, and edits should all be tried before deletion (except in the case of bad faith posts, abusive posts or spam). Deletion should be a last resort for a truly irredeemable post. And, if a good faith post is deleted, a comment should always be provided.

Note: I have edited this question to make it less specific to a particular post, and more general.

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My guess is that it is because it is literally a bad word-by-word copy from wikipedia - without disclosure and proper quoting or sourcing.

Failing to add any content or context to a source or to properly indicate which content is not your own may very well lead to deletion.

In other words: It is one thing to deliver a sourced answer. It is another one to simply copy a source without proper sourcing, even if a badly formatted link to that source is given.

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    That makes sense. However, I'd suggest that comments for improving the answer, or edits would be a better, less off-putting way to address the defects. I can't think of anything less welcoming to a new poster than having a well intentioned post deleted without any feedback.
    – Chris Sunami
    Dec 28, 2018 at 22:05

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