While I understand that there are many questions asked on SO that are way too broad, and they must be closed, I've *never* seen a question that was closed *and deleted* by the sole discretion of a moderator about three years after it has been asked.

I'm talking about [**Writing native-multiplatform GUI in C#**](https://stackoverflow.com/q/4956042/146622), asked on Feb 10 2011, closed and deleted by moderator [animuson](https://stackoverflow.com/users/246246/animuson) on Jan 27 this year.

I couldn't find anything here on meta on this specific question or deleting broad/closed questions in general. *Is there any new policy that I'm unaware of that warrants immediate deletion of broad questions?*

I followed a link from elsewere on SO to this particular question. By deleting it, SO is invalidating links and contributing to link rot. There are enough examples of questions that are now considered inappropriate for SO that are closed but not deleted.

It may not be a perfect question, and I'm not going to argue against closing it for being broad. But with 12 upvotes, no downvotes and 6 answers, if there is no compelling reason to delete this question, I don't believe it should have been deleted at all.