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This question was deleted by a ♦ mod as "off-topic" on the 18th of February:

jwt: 'module' object has no attribute 'encode'

Having encountered this exact issue today I found both the question and answer are in fact useful (and given the number of upvotes on both the question and highest voted answer, others did too).

I propose that the question be re-instated.

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    I've undeleted it to at least allow for a discussion about whether it should remain. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 17:08
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    I think the answer with +60/-0 disproves the "this one was resolved in a manner unlikely to help future readers" part of the close reason. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 17:17
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    I finally reopened and protected the question. I am not a python expert, but the quesiton and answers look useful enough for me. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 17:51
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    @πάνταῥεῖ - thanks. The highest upvoted answer solved the problem for me, also the question has pretty decent google-juice for the search term module 'jwt' has no attribute 'encode' (1st page, 3rd result...for me anyway) Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 18:02
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    @Kev Well, sometimes it seems that even ♦ mods strech their powers overzealously and too far. On the other hand we're all humans after all (which includes error prone decisions and assumptions). :-P Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 18:10
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    I highly disagree with this type of content being deleted. Sometimes, an explanation of some obscure fact that is hard to notice can save hours if not days of time. There are tens of thousands of posts which need actioning more than something like this. I am curious how it was discovered for deletion in the first place. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 18:39
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    @Kev - re: "google-juice", a large reason that Stack Overflow is so popular is for its quality content for error message searches, which is just another reason to keep this post. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 18:41
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    Hoooboyyyyy there's a mod not having a good day today... Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 18:57
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    It was a misunderstanding based on the self-answer that it wasn't reproducible and had no solution. Sorry about that. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 19:53
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    @YvetteColomb - easily done, and have done the same when I had my ♦. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 21:10
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    How did you find the deleted question out of curiosity? Commented Mar 8, 2019 at 11:19
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    @YvetteColomb to be fair, I almost made the same mistake after opening that question in a tab, and visiting it an hour later, the "self-answer" was the one that was on top by my "oldest" sort order Commented Mar 8, 2019 at 13:46
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    I set my Google results with 100 results per page. That way, everything is always on the first page. Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 12:31
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    @Félix Gagnon-Grenier: Sample how-to: Display More Than 10 Results in Google Search (essentially adding "num=100" to the query URL) Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 14:10
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    @YvetteColomb Was the sort order of answers a contributing factor? When I looked at the question just now (for some reason I had it on 'oldest' instead of 'votes'), I initially thought that 0-voted self-answer was the only (not deleted) answer, so I first wondered why it was important to preserve. Commented Mar 9, 2019 at 16:44

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I agree with you and the commenters who have expressed concern regarding this question's deletion. The number one rule when moderating Stack Overflow—whether as a regular community member or as a diamond moderator—should be not to destroy value. In other words, don't make the Internet a worse place by removing useful information.

In this case, it is pretty clear that the information is useful, based solely on the vote counts. The question is scored at +26/−0, while the top answer is scored at +63/−0. None of the 13,000 viewers found either of these to be unclear, not useful, or otherwise not helpful. That's a pretty strong signal, and overriding it must be done with extreme care.

Yvette has already copped to having made a mistake here. She handled a "not an answer" flag on the self-answer, and after reading that answer, concluded that the question was due to an issue that could not be reproduced and thus this Q&A would not be helpful to others in the future. There's a close reason specifically for that (under list of "off-topic" reasons), and it's a perfectly valid reason to close and/or remove questions.

When moderators are cleaning up low-quality answers, it's important that they also take the time to see if the question itself might be responsible for attracting those low-quality answers. If so, the question itself should be cleaned up, not just the answers. In other words: focus on the cause, not the symptoms.

This turned out to be a bit of an edge case, though. Despite the unhelpful self-answer, this problem does seem to be something that strikes a large number of people, and was resolved in a way that is massively helpful to future viewers. As such, the deletion was a simple mistake, and has since been corrected. Thanks for bringing it to our attention; please put away your pitchforks now. :-)

In the future, it's worth noting that mistakes like this can also be brought to the moderator team's attention by raising a custom flag on the deleted question (possible as long as you have privileges to see deleted posts) or on another question. I don't mean this suggestion as a way of discouraging posting on Meta when you actually want community input, but sometimes the Meta effect is undesirable.

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    Thanks Cody. re: pitchforks.....I hope folks don't think I was singling out Yvette. I endeavoured to make language in the request to undelete/re-open as neutral as possible. Have been there and done that myself when I was a mod and know what it's like on the other side :) Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 21:27
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    The pitchforks comment wasn't referring to you specifically, @Kev, but more to some of the other comments on the question. One made reference to diamond mods abusing their powers. It was flagged, but I declined the flag to avoid the accusation that diamond mods were abusing our powers by removing criticism. I totally understand both sides here. As a moderator, I know what it's like to make a mistake. As a community member, I hate to see value destroyed, whether by mistake or on purpose. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 21:29
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    Apropos custom flags.....my concern was that the flag queue was congested and a flag might not get processed for several days perhaps causing what I thought was a very useful answer to disappear from google. Commented Mar 7, 2019 at 21:30

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