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I want to leave.
But I'd like to download all questions I asked with their answers for further reference. Do you know a quick and easy way to achieve this?

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  • $\begingroup$ Depending on how much work you're willing to put in, assuming you need it offline (because as mentioned in the currently only answer, the content won't be deleted), you can make a GDPR request to see your data, and find PostHistory. You'll need to know how to code and hack together a quick script to filter out your posts and apply the changes to revisions as well, but this is slow. Alternative two is using the API and retrieving all your posts manually (possibly easier, but you'll need to get an API key, which isn't too hard, but again requires code). The third alternative is using the (1/2) $\endgroup$
    – user46216
    Oct 14, 2019 at 18:54
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    $\begingroup$ StackExchange Data Dumps should contain what you want $\endgroup$
    – Secespitus
    Oct 14, 2019 at 18:54
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    $\begingroup$ Stack Exchange data dump. Note that it's not updated often, and the date format isn't standard to me, so I'm not sure when it was updated. You still risk losing some data. It's still manual, but you could do it without code. Beyond that, you can manually copy-paste all your posts, but there's no options to bulk download everything aside a few "hacks" $\endgroup$
    – user46216
    Oct 14, 2019 at 18:55
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    $\begingroup$ Here are some starting points: meta.stackexchange.com/q/209040/157730 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/269804/157730 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/96049/157730 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/331170/157730 and meta.stackexchange.com/q/77331/157730. Mind the dates and make sure to check out linked posts as well. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Oct 15, 2019 at 11:06

3 Answers 3

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Deleting your account doesn't remove the content you created. That content will remain as part of SE, as you agreed when you accepted the ToS.

Just save a link to each post you made, and use for future reference.

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  • $\begingroup$ I know. I've read that question. I just don't want to visit the sites again after leaving. $\endgroup$
    – user6415
    Oct 14, 2019 at 18:50
  • $\begingroup$ OP hasn't actually said anything about deleting their account; they just want an offline record of their contributions. (For the record, @openend, I hope you don't delete your account just on the off chance that you change your mind at some point in the future and return.) $\endgroup$
    – F1Krazy
    Oct 14, 2019 at 20:00
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    $\begingroup$ @F1Krazy I will. I am fed up with the sites. Forced speech, thought police, and a misplaced focus on political agenda. I hate to leave, because worldbuilding.se was my favourite site on the internet. But I cannot support this, not even by silence. Guess I have to find a new means of research for my fiction writing. Its hard, but Ive made my decision. $\endgroup$
    – user6415
    Oct 14, 2019 at 21:00
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    $\begingroup$ @openend It should be fairly easy to modify what L.Dutch as written and use some script to download the entire webpage. That way you save a copy of all your questions and answers and any comments without too much effort. You can double check the Stackoverflow page for proper code, but powershell should make very quick work of this on any windows system. $\endgroup$
    – Shadowzee
    Oct 14, 2019 at 22:54
  • $\begingroup$ @Shadowzee Thanks! I already downloaded the xml database of 2 sites. I can search through the schema. $\endgroup$
    – user6415
    Oct 14, 2019 at 22:59
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Yes, there is a way! And there's no need to scrape web content, either, at least as long as you're only interested in your own posts.

  1. Go to Submit a Data Access Request

  2. Choose "Export my data"

  3. Choose "Submit request"

You'll get an e-mail with a confirmation link. (The request form shows which e-mail address the confirmation request will be sent to.)

Once you confirm that the request is legitimate, a ZIP file of JSON files with your activity across the network will be prepared and made available for you to download. When it's ready for download, you get another e-mail with a link to a landing page where it can be downloaded.

In my case, the whole process took about 15 minutes.

You'll most likely want to start with the respective files named PostHistory.json and PostComments.json.

If you're so inclined, once you have the post IDs for your answers and questions, you can download web pages with URLs like https://<sitename>.stackexchange.com/a/<POSTID> (I just tried; that works with question post IDs as well) to get a rendered copy (including other peoples' answers) to keep alongside the raw JSON representation of your own content.

The JSON files also include at least recently deleted posts.

The only obvious thing that appears to be missing at a glance is activity on sites which have been shut down. That can probably be gathered from the last Creative Commons data dump, if you want to.

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  • $\begingroup$ If you like this, consider also upvoting my answer to Dump of my own Stack Exchange content on Meta Stack Exchange. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Oct 25, 2019 at 20:51
  • $\begingroup$ Having been curious about this process, I've run my own dump. And you only get your own data. Which is cool, but it wont give the OP what they asked for, as they will not get the Answers to their Questions. Only their own Questions and their own Answer's to other people. $\endgroup$
    – Jontia
    Oct 29, 2019 at 16:19
  • $\begingroup$ @Jontia Yes, you are correct in that the GDPR data export only gets you your own data, because its purpose is to allow you to get a copy of your own data (as the GDPR requires that you are able to), not that of others. However, there's enough details in SE's GDPR data export, and enough interfaces publicly available, that you can relatively easily get the rest of the related content surrounding your content. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Nov 2, 2019 at 12:20
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This account is scheduled to be deleted 2 days ago. To cancel deletion, click here.

Does Anybody know whats up with that?

EDIT:

This account is scheduled to be deleted Oct 15 at 19:17

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  • $\begingroup$ Relax, you will be deleted at some point. $\endgroup$
    – The Square-Cube Law
    Oct 17, 2019 at 23:00
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    $\begingroup$ There's a manual verification step for people with lots of votes that tries to mitigate disrupting everyone's reputation when someone leaves and the couple of staff that handle deletions are dealing with a much higher than normal number of deletions lately. They'll get to it; I see deletions being processed on other sites. $\endgroup$
    – Troyen
    Oct 18, 2019 at 1:05

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