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After reading of: Should I vote to close old questions? I wonder if the answer also applies to flagging of old questions.

I have the subjective feeling the longer the time between the question and the flagging is, the longer it takes to become reviewed.

  • Is flagging of old posts a waste of moderator time?
  • Should I avoid that?
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  • 1
    Flagging them for what?
    – Bart
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:25
  • @Bart in generall. Mostly for OT or duplicate
    – jgb
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:28
  • meta.stackexchange.com/questions/97295/…
    – apaul
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:29
  • Not an exact dup. but you may find your answer there.
    – apaul
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:30
  • @apaul thanks ive already read this post. It sounds more as a post of a frustrated mod about "low quality" flags on old questions. Could his statement be applied to all flags on old posts in general?
    – jgb
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:37
  • The reasons behind the answers were what I was trying to point out.
    – apaul
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:40
  • @apaul Ok, I understand that reviewing of old posts may become frustrating. Notably if there is (must be) a huge queue.
    – jgb
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:48
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    "Broken windows shouldn't be allowed to remain just because they happened before a certain cutoff date", "if someone finds a specific post that no longer meets the guidelines and flags it, what's wrong with addressing that problem?"
    – apaul
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:51

1 Answer 1

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Absolutely!

If you would flag a 4-second-old post for an issue, there is no reason you shouldn't flag a 4-year-old post.

My reasoning is that both are indexed by Google - old posts don't get thrown down a black hole. If there are issues in a post, people will see them - and it reflects badly on the site. Therefore, these issues should be taken care of, just like any other, newer, post.

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  • 7
    I only upvoted this answer because it's still new enough.
    – jscs
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 21:46
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    older posts have more chance to collect links around the net and be ranked and listed higher on results than newer ones, so the posts should perhaps just be 'cleaned up', and deletion avoided where possible
    – James
    Commented Aug 21, 2013 at 22:04
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    Right. If we don't care to maintain this old content, we might as well just delete it.
    – Cody Gray
    Commented Aug 22, 2013 at 8:29
  • Thank you, I just came across a situation where I found a question, that to me, violates the current guidelines of SO. IMO, this question violates the following guideline: "Questions asking us to recommend or find a tool, library or favorite off-site resource are off-topic for Stack Overflow as they tend to attract opinionated answers and spam. Instead, describe the problem and what has been done so far to solve it." Reference: What topics can I ask about here?
    – Anil
    Commented Jan 22, 2014 at 22:03

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