Can comments or answers disappear other than being deleted by their authors?
I am sure there was another answer besides mine on "Spelling" tag, does it make sense for Japanese? and maybe I had some comments to the question itself.
So were these removed by their authors or some moderators or even some automated system? Did I/we say anything wrong there?
Or are such things intended to be secret/untraceable and I shouldn't really be asking?
You mean this one? which is deleted by owner.
Other than that, comments and answers can be deleted by original posters and moderators.
For comments, sometimes moderators could clean it up just for the cleaness on the page.
there was another answer on the spelling tag. I think it was deceze(sp?) but don't quote me on that... I figured he just deleted his answer after changing his mind after seeing your answer.
I am not aware that this happened recently (so I do not think that this applies to the case you are talking about), but it is possible that something bad happens on the server and it rolls back. In that case, you probably see some downtime, and when the server is back, the most recent changes (posts, comments, votes, etc.) made immediately before the downtime have disappeared without any trace. Although this is extremely rare, when this happens just after you have written a long and detailed answer, it can make you sad or angry (from some personal experience :) ).
