Show embattled deleted questions to the public as if they were 10k+ users

Question

There's much discussion about deleted questions. One suggestion on how to deal with them is, delete them, but collect them in a separate archive. That seems to be being pondered by the SE team, but it is nowhere near implementation yet. Shog comments here:

[...] Right now, the archive is SO - locked, annotated and immutable. When there's something better, we'll adjust for that

So how about taking that literally and, for certain questions, showing them to everybody as they are shown to 10k+ users? That means, with the normal "deleted" look, completely locked, but still accessible to everyone.

Background: The way 10k+ users see deleted questions is like this:

the entire body has a greyish backdrop, clearly signaling that this question was deleted.

To help prevent confusion over why some deleted questions are inaccessible, and some are visible, there could be an additional banner on top saying something like,

This question was deleted for reasons of moderation. Because of great demand, we continue to display it here as a courtesy to the community. It is subject to removal at any time; if you feel it is worth preserving, please store it locally for your convenience.

How I think this would do good:

• It would mellow down the indignation of non-10k+ users interested in the question. Currently, the question is withdrawn from them completely and more or less arbitrarily, following a mod or higher-rep user decision. I can see how that can make you angry - it feels pretty arrogant and in your face.

• It would fix the link rot caused by these deletions. SO could still send a 404 (or a 410 gone) so the questions get withdrawn from the Google Index.

• It would still clearly convey the message that the time for this kind of content on SO is over.

Let me be totally clear: this is not a proposal to make all deleted content accessible to the public. This is about battled, loved, high-traffic, high-vote questions only. The measure could be applied to those questions until such time as a decision is reached on an archive solution.

At the very least, it could be applied as a grace period of 30 or 60 days after deletion for any future deleted questions.

As to which questions to apply it to: I guess the simplest formula would be popularity - a mix of views and upvotes. Also, seeing as we are explicitly encouraged now to contest deletions on Meta, maybe those contestations would have to be taken into consideration to some extent. I don't know.

As to the threshold, that's tough to decide and would surely have to be a separate discussion.

It's far from being a long-term solution for anything, but it could be a short-term patch to ease the pain of deletions a little and help things until maybe one day an official archive comes into existence.

Answer 1

After quite a bit of deliberation, I've come around to supporting this solution as well, for the following reasons:

• The grey background is a striking visual indicator that clearly communicates the fact that something is different about this question. By contrast, post notices appear at the bottom of the post and are very easy to ignore.

  Consider the fact that, when these types of questions were open, people used to post duplicate answers en masse; that's clear evidence that users can't read. The dark background doesn't require them to read anything, it's right in their faces.

• The fact that they are actually in a deleted state removes the rep bonus. This is important. A lock and post notice communicates to new members that they can't ask about that specific topic anymore, but still leaves the impression that crowd-pleasing frivolity is a quick and easy path to fame and rep points.

  "Deleted but visible" - especially with the new "real-time rep" system - should effectively communicate the idea that even if they are successful in walking the line, they will eventually be reset to where they should be.

• This solution would, once and for all, settle the debate over whether the demands to keep these threads alive is born from an earnest desire to keep "useful" or "valuable" content alive, or if it's... some other reason. It seems to satisfy all or at least the majority of the inclusionist complaints, particularly regarding potential 404s ("breaking the internet") and potentially throwing out good content with the bad.

I'll also echo the recommendation that these not show up in search results, and also, in my opinion, they should hide not only the vote arrows but also the vote tallies. After all, this is about preserving the content, not the votes... right?

Answer 2

As to which questions to apply it to: I guess the simplest formula would be popularity - a mix of views and upvotes. Also, seeing as we are explicitly encouraged now to contest deletions on Meta, maybe those contestations would have to be taken into consideration to some extent. I don't know.

As to the threshold, that's tough to decide and would surely have to be a separate discussion.

I like this except that the decision as to which deleted questions remain visible and which do not should not rely solely on a popularity contest via number of upvotes. I fear that would allow lots of questions with popular, but genuinely bad content to remain visible.

I would lobby for there being two deletion vote options:

• Delete (invisible)
• Delete (visible)

and the number of votes necessary for each option would then scale with popularity, with the relative thresholds for each option depending on vote count, or some such algorithm to be determined by folks smarter than me.

I guess I feel that high-rep users on the site itself ought to have a fairly direct hand in choosing which deleted questions remain visible.

Answer 3

I don't think this is an ideal solution, because there will still be people who think the question is on the site and therefore grounds for justifying new similar questions. But I do think this is a good medium-term solution. I have no objection to content staying like this for an indefinite period of time until a better separate-site solution is implemented.

One thing I would add is that the questions should not turn up in a Stack Exchange search, in particular searches for questions ordered by votes.

I don't know what the proper behavior with respect to Google would be. It would be best for those questions not to turn up in a Google search, because they give a skewed idea of what the site is about. But I believe Google dislikes having different content for viewers and for its bots; if that is a problem, then so be it (it would take a while for the deleted questions to stop turning up on Google anyway).

I don't know if views really matter here; a simple vote threshold could suffice. If these posts do not confer reputation, I don't see to much opportunity for gaming the system.