Question: Moderators should be able to comment on things after normal users are unable to, such as when a post is deleted or locked. As a moderator on Programmers, I try to leave a comment (if necessary) before taking the appropriate action on the post. However, in the time it takes to write a comment (which often includes digging up links to the most relevant resources and citing specific problems), things may happen - users can leave new answers or comments, Community or the author can delete the post, and so on.

A responding moderator should be able to take the appropriate moderator action on the post to remove the problematic behavior/content from the site and then leave a comment so that the user can learn why this behavior is unacceptable or what needs to be done to fix the content (if it's fixable).

This would effectively change the workflow from {hope no one will do anything -> write a comment -> hope nothing happened to the post that invalidates or blocks the comment -> moderate} to {moderate -> comment}.

Diamond moderators should be able to comment on posts that are otherwise locked from comments.

When a moderator comments on a deleted post, the comment should generate an inbox notification for the post's author just as it would if it were posted right before the post was deleted.

Answer: 
This would be extremely helpful.

I've had the following real world cases happen:

* A user defaces their own post. I lock the post, then remember I should comment letting everyone know why it's locked. I unlock the post, and write a comment, only to discover that the user has *once again* defaced the post in the meantime.
* I delete a post, then remember, "Hey, I should comment to let them know why it's being deleted.", and then I have to undelete the post, comment, and re-delete.

Both of these are sub-optimal for me and for the users who frequent these posts. I believe this feature is necessary to allow moderators the ability to moderate in the least surprising way possible.
*Educational* aspect of deleted content has been specifically stressed in the rationale for a recently introduced change:

* [Turbocharging the Roomba: solutions for premature deletion](https://meta.stackexchange.com/q/173513/165773)

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> Show users their deleted content. ...without this, it's always a trade-off between cleaning up trash and **letting the asker know what they did wrong**.
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From above perspective, allowing moderators add explanatory comments in the deleted posts makes perfect sense.

* Related, although probably less important, as a [10Ker](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/privileges/moderator-tools "having a privilege to see deleted content") at Programmers I also would appreciate seeing and learning from "post-mortem" mod comments in some of deleted posts I see.

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For the sake of completeness, it is worth noting that *technically*, there is a workaround for moderator to temporarily undelete, add comment, then re-delete the post.

It is also worth noting that frequent usage of mentioned workaround could be [*considered harmful*](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Considered_harmful) as it would pollute "Recent Occurrences" section at [10K tools page](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/tags/10k-tools/info) by bumping posts that are not intended to be there, thus causing reviewers waste efforts trying to decrypt WTH caused particular post get there and figure what actions to take about it.

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> ![http://i.stack.imgur.com/G4lgS.png](https://i.stack.imgur.com/G4lgS.png "screen shot: 'Recent Occurrences' section at 10K tools page")
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