6

Suppose an old closed question has an historical lock on it, making impossible to vote/comment/flag on any post.

What should we do if such questions have a high visibility but contains some outdated or wrong information? What if the answers of a historical locked question become obsolete? indicates that such questions should be unlocked (and potentially removed), but what about cases where most of the information is still accurate and useful?

For instance:

What are best practices that you use when writing Objective-C and Cocoa?

I think this post still deserves a historical lock as the information provided is indeed useful. Only little parts of it are gradually becoming outdated and still being hit every time one queries for cocoa best practices.

What should we do when a historical-locked question provides, say 85% of useful up-to-date information and 15% of outdated one?

Improve this question
10
  • @Shog9 thanks for pointing me to the duplicate question. I'll put a bounty on it since the accepted answer doesn't consider the case in which a locked post contains mostly useful information and only a few parts are outdated.
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:19
  • I've linked to a longer answer, but the short version is: if it reaches the point where it's no longer useful, post a request here & we'll remove it. Until then, try your best to scavenge any useful information for use in less broad, subjective questions... Or even move them into a tag wiki.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:19
  • Eh... Don't bounty it; if the solution presented on that question doesn't work for a given scenario, explain why and propose a better solution. You could do this in either an answer on that question, or an entirely new question.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:21
  • @Shog9 clear. Still that question is being hit by the Cocoa best practices query as first result and it's providing some outdated information. I think we should do something like marking it as outdated or at least being able to propose edits to keep the information fresh.
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:21
  • @Shog9 I don't have a better solution actually, should I go ahead and explain my concerns modifying this question?
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:22
  • Sure, go ahead. FWIW: the big problem with that question is that it has 33 answers... And stands a really good chance of ending up with more if it's unlocked. Folks might be convinced to keep one or two answers up-to-date, but it's pretty unlikely anyone wants to babysit a few dozen. That's why I would strongly suggest moving the good parts to a wiki, where folks can update it as they see fit.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:24
  • @Shog9 Done. I don't think the post should be unlocked either, but there should probably be a way of proposing edits even to a locked answer.
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:28
  • The problem is that if it can change then it isn't really locked anymore - it stops being a historical artifact and starts being a living document. That's not a bad thing, but it is something different. FWIW, I'm occasionally experimenting with a 3rd option for questions that have a single (or at least a reasonable number) of wiki answers - however, that wouldn't work here.
    – Shog9 Mod
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:33
  • 1
    I see, yes it's indeed an issue and that's why I would like to see it discussed. Right now we have Stack Overflow providing outdated information in posts with an extremely high visibility and we don't have a strategy for dealing with them.
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:35
  • @Shog9 thanks for the edit, much better!
    – Gabriele Petronella
    Commented Nov 11, 2013 at 23:41

0

Reset to default

You must log in to answer this question.