Timeline for Building an archive of deleted questions
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
29 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 3, 2020 at 13:30 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
Commonmark migration
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| May 23, 2017 at 12:36 | history | edited | CommunityBot |
replaced http://stackoverflow.com/ with https://stackoverflow.com/
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| Jul 22, 2012 at 5:05 | comment | added | Joe R. | Perhaps SE can archive deleted question, for internal analytical use only? | |
| Jun 23, 2012 at 10:56 | comment | added | systempuntoout | If you decline this, this StackApps feature request becomes more and more important. Having the SE API returning the deleted question will let some romantic user to build the unwanted questions graveyard. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 20:17 | vote | accept | Pekka | ||
| Jun 15, 2012 at 20:17 | comment | added | Pekka |
Fair enough. I would love to see a SO-hosted archive for the entertaining stuff, but I can totally accept it's not worth all the trouble for those alone. As long as there is an option to unearth the useful stuff... @Shog9 would you status-decline this then please? For closure? And the other one too: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/124464/…
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| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:58 | comment | added | Shog9 | @Pekka: the primary value of HL is for that tiny minority of questions that (for whatever reason) folks care enough about to make a case for their preservation. Whether because of some intrinsic value, or simply nostalgia. The site is reasonably protected from them, but I could see further distorting the appearance at some point to make them less confusing for the new visitors who do come across them. More importantly, I think the ability to lock up "historical" questions in this fashion allows us to discuss the pros and cons of deletion without a handful of exceptions being distractions. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:49 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka - It has it's place, and I think it's a good solution for things that are on the borderline. If it ends up being used as replacement for deletion, I'd support removing it. As used thus far, I expect it to stay around. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:39 | comment | added | Pekka | SO Kevin, @Shog - just to clarify: the historical lock is there to stay? Even though it, viewed strictly, creates broken windows and allows content to stay that, according to what Kevin says above, should be deleted? I'm not trying to argue here, but I was under the impression that you want everything gone, including the content that is locked currently. I have much less of a problem with all of this if there is some process one can use to get useful stuff dug up again. Losing programming cartoons et al. forever is sad but I can see how they're not worth going through all this pain | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:34 | comment | added | Pekka | @Shog I'm 100% sure I asked at least once through a flag which was declined some 3-4 months ago, and then again today. However, Tim Post and I conversed in SO comments today, and he may have undeleted the post directly as opposed to through a flag. Could that have had an effect on things? Edit: ah, then I must have mixed this up - it was indeed closed for some time before it was deleted! In that case, Kevin, I was mistaken about this specific instance, sorry. I'll look for other examples later. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:31 | comment | added | Shog9 | @Pekka: actually, I see only one flag for undeletion on that post - was there a meta post or chat discussion perhaps? [Edit: there was a request for re-opening at one point from you (confusingly marked "helpful" even though it wasn't honored) maybe you were thinking of that? ] | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:28 | comment | added | Pekka | if the mod had not happened to ping me asking to paraphrase the deleted question's contents, the correction would never have happened. I had already given up on it. Check the history, I fruitlessly asked for undeletion at least once, if not twice or even thrice. If you feel that is a system that works, hey, good for you. Have fun with it. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:26 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka and undeleted and locked, a system that self-corrects is still working; to pretend otherwise is disingenuous. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:25 | comment | added | Pekka | Bollocks. The question was deleted for months and remained so despite my flagging and asking for undeletion. It was locked today because a moderator encountered an instance of link rot and I flagged it again. Otherwise, it would have been gone for good. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:25 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka looks like historical lock is working, good to know. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:24 | comment | added | Pekka | But well, it's your site, and I guess this has been decided now anyway, so no point in arguing any further really | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:23 | comment | added | Pekka | "blind assertions to the contrary" - I'm just looking at some of my own content that's been deleted, e.g. this question. While I agree with it getting closed and locked (and any rep and badges forfeited - I really wouldn't care about that happening at all), I disagreed with its deletion - if only because it's been linked to from elsewhere. At least one flag to undelete it was denied previously, and it was undeleted today only because there was an instance of link rot. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 19:01 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka pure speculation, the most cited questions (IMO as someone who's lived through quite a bit of this discussion) to keep are in fact killed because of increased strictness; blind assertions to the contrary contradict the oldest FAQ text, which I linked. I also doubt many people are discouraged from asking by the 2% chance of their contribution being found off-topic 6 months later. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:55 | comment | added | Pekka | As it stands, you as a user can't trust that stuff that was contributed in good faith will survive some future purge when policies evolve yet again (because come on. This whole thing was not just about the law finally being interpreted correctly.) and that is a major turn-off from making contributions. You guys now preserve the rep from "stuff that should have been deleted", but not the actual contributions themselves that might be useful. How does that make sense? It should be the other way round. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:49 | comment | added | Pekka | well, if that's your view, and the final word on the issue, then I guess that's the way it's going to stay. But there's huge disagreement over what "should be deleted", and in many cases I can understand why (I'm talking about actually useful content as well that is being deleted, not just"greatest programming cartoon"). | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:42 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka - and the legal concerns are just a small portion of this, even addressing that leaves the giant elephant of "this stuff should have been deleted in the past, and should be deleted now" point. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:41 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka no, that's not the issue. Yes, once we find things we can destroy them easily. The trick is right now users can basically self serve, self-deletion and flagging are sufficient. With the proposed changes they aren't, people have to know that deletion doesn't mean deletion anymore; which they won't, and when they discover that they'll probably be rather peeved (and we may be legally culpable). | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:39 | comment | added | Pekka | I'm still not sure this can't be solved relatively easily. I assume the way legally problematic content is dealt with right now is, it gets flagged and then destroyed by a mod or a dev. Adding a "destroy" option to the "delete" button for mods and devs is admittedly a complication, but it's surely not impossible to educate them on what each thing does. And re the "new users" argument - the "archived" search flag could be made available to 5k+ or 10k+ users only to make the content even harder to discover. If you then add the current "deleted" look, and a big fat notice as suggested here: | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:20 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka - except you can't always delete your own stuff, enough people would have to get their stuff "double deleted" to be a concern. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:19 | comment | added | Pekka | as per Shog's suggestion, user-deleted content would remain invisible | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:18 | comment | added | Kevin Montrose | @Pekka - .... no. I really doubt that covers us legally, as a user can have a reasonable expectation that "deletion" means "deletion" and they don't need to flag for "double secret deletion". | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:17 | comment | added | Pekka | The legal aspects could be easily addressed by letting mods re-delete stuff, and make that deletion stick. I don't see a legal risk that gets any bigger through showing deleted questions than it already is from every question - plus, Shog's suggestion wouldn't necessarily have to be retroactive. | |
| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:13 | history | edited | Kevin Montrose | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 1 characters in body
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| Jun 15, 2012 at 18:06 | history | answered | Kevin Montrose | CC BY-SA 3.0 |