Deletion of answers to off-topic questions

Question

Last year I asked this question on meta about whether it's ok to answer off-topic questions. Today I saw this question from a new user which is clearly off-topic, but somebody had taken the trouble to answer it anyway, and seeing no problems with the answer, I upvoted it.

Now, maybe my Japanese is even worse than I thought and the answer was in fact wrong, but I was surprised to find that the answer had subsequently been deleted by a moderator. It doesn't seem to me that this is a good way to encourage people to answer questions, and leads me to once again ask about our policies on answering off-topic questions.

Answer 1

The question What does this Image say? that you were asking about has several problems:

1. It is off-topic
2. It has attracted a number of downvotes
3. Containing an image only, it is unlikely to be found by anyone (unless people are browsing low-score questions).

These are good reasons to allow it to be auto-deleted (see the relevant entry in the Help Center). However, having an upvoted answer on a question prevents it from being auto-deleted.

So there is a(n objective) difference between answering off-topic questions in the comment section (which you asked about in Etiquette regarding commenting/answering off-topic questions) and answering in the answer section. Namely, answers may save the question from auto-deletion, even on questions which are maybe best left for auto-deletion.

As for the question, I converted the answer to a comment — now the effort of the answerer is not lost immediately and visible to the OP. Question & comments will now stay around forever if the question has a positive score and auto-deleted otherwise. I think this is fair and consistent with the consensus on Etiquette regarding commenting/answering off-topic questions.