Why isn't it possible to delete an accepted answer?

Question

I answered this question quite some time ago with a link that was useful to the asker at the time, but has since decayed (error 404). At the time, my answer was accepted, but it is now completely useless. Korvin's answer is still valid. I have flagged the answer.

Should I be able to delete my (now useless) answer, even though at the time it was accepted? Even if flagging it will lead to its deletion, surely that is a waste of moderators' time?

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I am fully aware of the dangers of link-only answers, and was at the time; I merely sought to be of use to the asker with their immediate problem.

Answer 1

For a fairly pragmatic reason: the Stack Exchange software has guards to prevent people from deleting material that's critical to a Q&A site's usefulness. That includes questions that have non-negative scored answers, and accepted answers. Some people, out of dumb reasons or selfish tactics, might seek to delete those later, but doing so does significant damage to our Q&A platform, so it's not on.

If you feel something you can't delete really needs deletion, just flag it anyway. Moderators can decide what's not worth their time (or what shouldn't be deleted) by declining the flag, and they may give you pointers on what you need to do instead.

In this case, Zaq found something you can do in comments.