I noticed that the original-now-replaced CoC FAQ was deleted.
When the new CoC FAQ came out, I tried to look for my old answer as well as others for comparison. Why not just mark the old one superseded by [insert link]?
Note: I don't care about lost rep. There were a lot of useful links in answers and comments there (and some less-than-useful ones too).
The original FAQ was written as a supporting document for the blog post; as such, it omitted a great deal of material regarding goals and rationale. However, due to technical limitations, it became the de-facto landing spot for most readers, a role for which it was ill-suited. As a result, it was quickly swamped by unanticipated questions, unaddressed concerns, and many, many, many discussions.
Two days later, Gareth McCaughan, a long-time member of the community here and a respected moderator on our Puzzling site, wrote a much better FAQ that covered much of what had been left unaddressed in the "official" version.
The community manager team here at Stack Exchange - primarily Cesar M, Catija and JNat - took their lead from this initiative, and worked to adapt and expand on this community-driven FAQ. They've spent the past week compiling, revising and reviewing the new FAQ, collecting feedback from moderators and other concerned members of the community, and working to reconcile outstanding points of confusion or concern.
With the new FAQ released, the old one no longer serves any purpose. With just shy of 1,000 flags raised on the question, its answers, and associated comments... It had become a mess that would have been prohibitively expensive to clean up.
In such a situation, deletion is not only expedient, it is all but negligent to not delete.
To the folks suggesting a historical lock: such locks are meant for popular posts that are no longer appropriate, a way to keep culturally important things around. A FAQ that caused more harm than good does not qualify; it would continue to be a stumbling-block for readers if kept. The harm vastly outweighs the value of its short history at this point.
Also... All those flags I mentioned? We avoided handling quite a lot of them, but this would not fly if we kept the question and all answers visible - we'd be faced with the task of going through and trying to ascertain the validity of flags in a great many acrimonious conversations. I guarantee that no one involved in the many threads there would be happy with the results.
(Disclaimer: I do have an answer on that question, too ... and I am sad to see the 500 upvotes gone. But my issue is a different one.)
That is exactly the opposite of what Stack Exchange Inc. should be doing right now.
Just the other day, the company said: "yes, we understand we should listen". Now you come in, and delete all that user input on that question. But there were some really great answers. Which now only 10K rep users can ever get to, from here on.
This is the exact opposite of listening. It feels like you just took all that user input, to flush it down the toilet. ( Supposedly, a lot of the user input given for FAQ1 made it into version 2. But alas, who could say, now that the original FAQ1 is gone ... )
Yes, that question was a mess, but there would have been better ways to deal with that. Like: editing title/question content, clearly expressing: "new better content is around now, so we lock the things here, have a look there".
These are exceptional times, so maybe come up with something exceptionally better than "let's throw all that user input away".
And note how much churn that this decision is causing already. If the old FAQ had just been locked, nobody would have complained.
But yet, here we are...
In my not so humble opinion, SE is making a massive mistake deleting the thread.
I agree that semantically, historical locking might not be appropriate. However, effectively it's exactly what we need.
As the community, reason #1 for spending even a minute of our time on meta is because we want SE to listen to us, so we can work together and make all the sites the best we can, and the most useful for all visitors, logged in or not. The community needs SE's help and cooperation for that.
Removing triple digits of answers and tens of thousands of votes has nothing to do with working together.
What SE should do here is undelete it, then lock it for all interactions except perhaps those of moderators. Hang a big, fat, unmissable banner at the top among the lines of:
This post is only here to record the community response to our CoC update of [exact date]. However, it is now oudated by CoC[link], which is discussed here[another link].
Please show us you care about our thoughts. This can only work if we all work together, even if you guys have the capability to delete posts we don't.
As the top voted answer owner on the question, it makes me incredibly concerned that the question was deleted without obvious warning. Combined with the fact that my (semi controversial) answer had its comments wiped out 3 times without explanation while other highly voted answer comments remained intact is concerning to me. I’m not saying we’re being censored, but it’s starting to feel like it.
For those that lack 10K reputation, and thus are unable to see deleted questions, the Wayback Machine is a great tool.
(M)SE, and more specifically the post mentioned was frequently captured. The last capture before deletion can be found here. The next capture, ~15 mins later, shows the 404 page to indicate the question was deleted.
It doesn't make any difference if the deletion is what would normally be done (and I might even dispute that); that it was done now, in the current climate, is unconsidered and only bound to feed into ideas of skepticism, doubt, and mistrust.
If nothing more, the appearance of its deletion is that (1) SE doesn't like the bad image it's getting, (2) isn't listening to what anybody else is telling it, and (3) doesn't care about what anybody else is telling it.
Unfortunately, the deletion of that thread—which was one of the most community-driven and vocal of any thread in recent history—looks bad and simply increases that perception.
This was an error of judgment by SE. It sends entirely the wrong message, as noted in other answers.
I would have preferred closing as a duplicate of the newer Code of Conduct, as has been the practice.
The Q & A could also have been locked, if ongoing activity was deemed counter-productive.
Some content probably had little lasting value, but that could have been cleaned up gradually over time.
There was no particular rush, since most of the content had been seen to death already.
Deleting the Q & A at some point in the future could have been an option.
If left for the right length of time (60 days?), rep earned from +3 posts or higher(?) would have been preserved as normal.
There were better options here.
I don't know why I but I can tell you my reaction. Next time I will think twice before devoting as much time to write an answer.
Writing and rewriting to cut the cruft and leave the essential message. Formatting. Orthography. Checking comments and incorporating suggestions for improvement. All down the drain.
Why do I devote effort here if this is the outcome?
This is a gesture of disrespectfulness towards community. A lot of people put some effort and spend some time of their life contributing to the feedback the management actually requested.
To add to that, question with a magnitude of negative feedback is still valuable asset that does have historical significance. We learn on our errors, we document our failures so that we can refer them later if needed.
Negative feedback is not necessarily a hostile or non-constructive feedback. Deleting posts like this is a sign of very weak PR policies.
Denying that reason was exactly what it actually was is a sign of even bigger problems.
I’m very disappointed because of all these recent developments.
This might be an unpopular opinion, but here goes:
While it might have made sense for SE to keep the question up to prevent angering certain parts of the community, the obsolete FAQ and the answers commenting on it are no longer relevant and no longer have value to the discussion.
The original version of the FAQ had serious problems. The community overwhelmingly rejected it and pointed those flaws out. StackExchange listened to that feedback and removed that policy, replacing it with a new and improved version. This sounds like exactly what we want from them!
As for the answers: when the policy they were commenting on was removed, they also lost their relevance. There are really only 2 options, either:
Keeping this thread around is just noise and would serve to keep people focused on old fights, instead of focusing on current issues (Monica, general communication with SE, perfecting the new FAQ).
I know lots of people are angry at SE, and don’t trust SE, and think their voices aren’t being listened to: but we should try to keep things in perspective. Improvements happen when we make positive suggestions for how things can be improved (see what Gareth accomplished with their Pronominal Proposal), not when we focus on re-fighting old fights.
the obsolete FAQ and the answers commenting on it are no longer relevant and no longer have value to the discussion. We have had a very specific, well-defined process for such questions for almost a decade now; never has it been deleting the question entirely.
Commented
Oct 23, 2019 at 21:10
The short answer is: Because SE is showing their true color in its full glory. OR for a shorter version: Complete lack of integrity.
We can't have multiple posts with different, contradicting policies. I think it was the right call to delete it, because there is no other sensible way to withdraw the old policy.
Locked means "can't be changed", which is usually reserved for important posts, not for archiving old junk. This is appropriate for a current policy in effect. It can also be used as a temporary means to resolve edit wars etc.
Historical lock means old stuff that is actually off-topic or otherwise unsuitable for the site, but should be preserved anyway, because lots of people find it useful. I really don't see how this applies to a massively unpopular and now withdrawn policy.
Besides, these two terms above are probably too subtle for anyone but meta veterans to grasp. Policies should be easily accessible by anyone, including people who have never visited meta before. They shouldn't risk stumbling upon old policies by mistake.
The lesson learnt for the future is to separate the policy post itself from discussion around the policy. As was done when the new policy was posted. Then we can easily archive the discussion with historical lock.
I would contend that retaining a massively downvoted post related to pronouns is harmful.
Future readers won't necessarily understand the context in which it was written. Future readers might simply think there is widespread disagreement with pronoun usage consistent with a user's request.
That particular post has certainly left me with some doubts, making me reflect on why so many people are downvoting it.
Do that many users consider disrespecting transgender users acceptable?
Does Stack Exchange have a community where, below the surface, it's hostile to transgender people?
Are the other ongoings being used as a cover story to voice "we don't like transgender people" without being labelled as transphobic?
Besides, surely the updated version is vastly better.
I never thought I would actually find anything to compare to Holocaust denialism, the systematic hiding and ignoring of painful history.
With this deletion SE is perpetrating user dissatisfaction denialism.
I read the new FAQ and when compared to the old FAQ there is not much substantive change, however I keep thinking the advice looks much more like what Monica Cellio got fired for.
Has she received her apology yet or is she going to be remain painted with the interim FAQ of the at that point unpublished CoC that she is said to have run afoul of?
