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I recently posted a question about the reasoning behind the altitude of the Dawn Spacecraft's orbit around Ceres, and it was duly and helpfully answered. But it was kindly revealed that my understanding from the NASA and Wikipedia articles was incorrect.

On one hand, the responses were great and helpful to someone who might have thought the same thing I had. On the other hand, I feel bad about having asked a question based on the wrong information. I'd just like to do the right thing for the community, as I'm only a few months old here.

Should I remove that question?

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  • $\begingroup$ I just dawned on me that I might not be able to remove a question. $\endgroup$
    – Mikey
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 12:50
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    $\begingroup$ "Dawn" $\to$ "dawned". Nice (perhaps unintentional?) pun. $\endgroup$
    – HDE 226868
    Commented Mar 8, 2015 at 15:58
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    $\begingroup$ For what it's worth, i enjoyed the opportunity to answer the question (with much-needed technical oversight from Mark Adler). Sometimes people find this site because a question is nagging at them, but space isn't something they regard as a real interest of theirs. Sometimes an answer to such a question can stoke that fleeting interest into an ongoing interest, if its explanation shows the person that there are actually a lot of fascinating things behind their question, and wouldn't they like to know more? :) Your question brought a trail of people just like that in your wake. Thanks for that. $\endgroup$
    – kim holder
    Commented Mar 16, 2015 at 1:39

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IMHO, it's not a bad question at all. That you so far got only up votes (and not only few at that, which for a Sunday is a pretty good feat on our still young site), no close votes and at least two helpful answers (and a copy edit) that might help someone else wondering about the same thing too means the question has been accepted by our community. So what if you misinterpreted or missed altogether some fine print? It happens to all of us.

No, you shouldn't remove the question and indeed you cannot remove it since it has positive score answers. The only way to remove it now would be through moderator flags, but would likely be rejected (I would) on grounds of not being anything obviously wrong with it. That would happen only if you inadvertently posted some sensitive information in it, or anything like that. So without good grounds for deletion, even moderators won't be inclined to oblige your delete request.

Leave it as is. Or, if you'd really like to disassociate yourself from it, edit to convert it into a community wiki. But there isn't any need for that either, and we're trying to avoid community wiki threads if at all possible, so we keep contributions authored (any new answers to community wiki questions are automatically converted into community wikis too).

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  • $\begingroup$ That's okay, yours is a better answer anyways... $\endgroup$
    – PearsonArtPhoto Mod
    Commented Mar 9, 2015 at 11:42
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No. Odds are that someone else will have the same question, and you can help them by keeping your question in place. Deleting questions should be saved for those that are not clear or off topic.

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