Would you delete these questions? Isn’t closing enough?

Question

This question is mainly motivated by the following case, which I have just noticed on Stack Overflow:

• Learning Python in one weekend (Snapshot)
• Learning JavaScript in one weekend

The Python question was posted on April 21, but got closed and ultimately deleted on May 1. Unfortunately there were some pretty good answers in there, especially the top-voted one by ghostdog74, which I am sure took plenty of time and effort to write and revise.

The JavaScript question was posted 12 hours after the Python one, and received roughly the same amount of answers, of similar quality, especially the accepted answer by CMS. However, in this case nobody bothered to cast a single close vote, but more importantly, the JavaScript question is still there for public reference, unlike the Python version which got deleted.

I understand that both question are subjective, and probably should have been a community wiki, but I find it difficult to consider them argumentative or off topic.

So my question is, should we vote to close the JavaScript question so that we delete it, or should we vote to reopen the Python version?

Answer 1

I can't imagine that those questions are the first ones to ask how to best learn python/javascript.

So if these questions are duplicates they should be closed. If there are any especially useful answers these should be merged into the original questions and the rest should be deleted.

Answer 2

UPDATE: This thread was posted just a few hours before deletion votes became rate limited. The concerns highlighted in this answer will hopefully be mitigated by this feature. Nonetheless, I appreciate that about 200 of the most popular deleted threads are being audited in The Great Question Deletion Audit of 2010, which is what I intended to incite with this answer. Thank you Jeff, for listening and responding promptly.

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I say that the Python question should be undeleted (at least).

I have to admit that I do not frequent the 10k moderation tools very much, and I appreciate the guys that keep the trilogy sites clean by monitoring this often. However, just from today's "Recently Deleted" questions, I cannot help but wonder whether questions such as the following had to be deleted:

• Is the ‘var’ keyword bad? Or am I just old school?
• Why do some languages not use semicolons and braces?
• Why does the .NET framework not include USB tools?
• What best describes clean code?
• How measure complexity of program
• Do vs. Run vs. Execute vs. Perform verbs
• Premature optimization is the root of all evil, but can it ever be too late?
• Is it compulsory to learn about Data Structures if you want to be a Java/C++ programmer?
• Given 3 pts, how do I calculate the normal vector?
• What is the difference between scripting language and a programming language?
• What is JUnit in Java?

On this, there seems to be an "official policy" on the SO blog that defines the properties of questions that should be deleted. Quoting:

Why would you delete a question? Isn’t closing it enough?

1. Some questions are of such poor quality that they cannot be salvaged. They’re literally nonsense. Not every byte of data that is created in the world is infinite and sacred.
2. Some questions are so incredibly off topic that they add no value to a programming community.
3. The mental cost of processing these closed questions is not zero, particularly for users who are actively engaged and scanning questions to find things they can help answer.
4. If users see a lot of closed questions, they’ll note that we don’t enforce the guidelines, so why should they? Without any final resolution, asking questions that get closed becomes something we are implicitly encouraging — a broken windows problem. If this goes on for long enough, we’re no longer a community of programmers who ask and answer programming questions, we’re a community of random people discussing.. whatever. That’s toxic.
5. If enough of these closed questions are allowed to hang around, they become clutter that reduces the overall signal to noise ratio — which further reduces confidence in the system.

(I added the bold and bullet numbering myself)

It is probably points 3, 4 and 5 that are a bit of a grey area, where the community may disagree what constitutes clutter, mental cost, or a broken windows problem. On the other hand, I guess classifying questions as "literally nonsense" and "incredibly off topic" should be quite straightforward.

I think that one of the problems is that deleted questions do not get enough visibility for others to counter-react with undelete votes. The reasons for this were recently described by mmyers a few days ago.

In fact, I would propose that while the deletion process remains as is, we could submit a post on Meta whenever we encounter a deleted question that got deleted and with which we disagree. The post should contain the arguments in favor of its resurrection, and the community would get some visibility and enough information to make an informed decision on whether to cast an undelete vote or leave it as it is. Maybe this post by Jeff Atwood and this one by Greg Hewgill could be taken as examples.

In the log run, I think this could also serve to refine the policies of what should be deleted in the first place.

Answer 3

There's a subtle but important difference between the two questions, that being that the JavaScript question specifically asks for online resources, whereas the python question seems to merely ask "how do I learn python?"

It may seem like splitting hairs, but it's all in the wording. If I ask a question, "how do I build an e-commerce site", it would rightly get closed as nonsense. But if the question is "what are some good resources on building e-commerce web sites", that's not so bad (as long as it's CW).

The former seems like it's asking us to do the work, to write up a long tutorial or a bunch of bullet-point "best practices" for them to follow. The latter respects other people's time and assumes that answers will consist of mostly outbound links, not private tutoring sessions.

I think that the python question would be okay, if it were reworded and converted to CW. The JavaScript question should also be CW. With the appropriate phrasing, neither are truly subjective.

I'll vote to undelete the first one if and only if I see it converted to wiki mode and if somebody more familiar than I with the subject matter can edit it to sound less subjective.

Answer 4

This question seems to be particularly in the water at the moment. Most of the recent discussion has been about duplicates, not 'subjective' or 'off topic.' For duplicates, recent discussion has centered around 'flag the question so that a diamond can merge it.' Several of us with janitorial tendencies have been switching from 'click delete' to 'flag for moderator attention' for dups with interesting answers.

There still seem to be some quirks even in this process in terms of arranging things so that the maximum value is preserved. A recent suggestion is that the sites need a new condition for a question that would preserve the question and title but send the reader to some other question to read or write answers.

On the non-duplicate front, there is a side-effect of deletion that we can't entirely sweep under the rug: the rep game. I believe that it's relevant to some of the items you list above, as follows:

1. Someone opens a subjective or humorous or troll question without ticking off Community Wiki.
2. Like flies to carrion, a swarm of upvotes arrives.
3. The question is closed, often after multiple iterations of close/reopen.
4. Deletion wipes out all the dubious rep. Leaving it closed does not.

I know that I have a visceral reaction when I see 'how do you pronounce C++' with 20 upvotes and no community wiki, and I suspect that I'm not alone. (No, I haven't seen that, but I've seen plenty of other 'how do you pronounce' noise.)

Answer 5

I have just cast the final (for now) vote to reopen the original python question. By no means should it have been either closed or deleted.

Keep in mind, however, that the moderation process is a "democratic" one. There are currently two very diametrically opposed opinions on the subject of moderation. Most agree that stupid questions or obviously duplicated or spammy questions should be removed. But it's that subjective/argumentative thing that is a huge bone of contention. It's quite possible the question will be re-closed or even re-deleted.

Alas that I can only cast one vote on the subject.