This is the little-known Save Draft feature:
- We save drafts automatically for all new answers and new
questions once every 45 seconds.
This means that you can replace the text of your answer with a single space, hang around for 45 seconds, and your draft will be replaced with this space. There are better solutions, though, keep reading.
Ctrl-s will allow you to save a draft whenever you want (though
it will disallow this happening too aggressively.
The Ctrl-s save feature was removed, so we got this Userscript instead. It implements a 'clear' function which replaces the text of your answer (or question) with a single space and then saves this draft. This solution is the closest you'll come to your feature request.
- Drafts are not supported on self-answer.
- Drafts are not supported (yet) on edits.
- You only get one draft for an answer and one for a question.
(If you start a new post, old draft is blown away.)
This is the best solution! Write an awesome new answer, possibly to a different question. As long as you take at least 45 seconds to compose it, your old draft will be deleted and we'll have a new answer.
- Drafts will vanish and go away after a week.
This means you didn't wait long enough.
- Drafts work for the anonymous user as well.