13

I am referring to Why is Git better than Subversion? on Stack Overflow.

Was there any reason to delete this question? Or was it just decided by a few (17) people? This question had 395 upvotes, was 240 times stared, the top answer had > 550 votes.

To be honest, I am quite embarrassed.
The question is kind of subjective, but a lot of people liked it and the answers provided there. I know, Stack Overflow is community driven, but right now this feel like some kind of wikipedia exclusionist movement is taking over.

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22

That question took two and a half months to delete. It would have taken a lot longer, but a moderator stepped in to finish the job.

All that time, it was closed. Five people could have voted to re-open, and those delete votes would have evaporated...

A question with tens of thousands of views, hundreds of votes, and five people couldn't be bothered to say, "hey, this ain't so bad"...?

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  • 6
    Right now, it is unfortunately not possible to vote for undeletion. As soon as a moderator votes, it is over ... – tanascius Dec 3 '11 at 1:49
  • Er...there's an undelete link for me. Haven't tried it, of course. – dmckee Dec 3 '11 at 1:53
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    @tanascius: yeah, kinda late to do anything about it now. I suppose you could try editing the question to be somewhat less Fight! and then flag for a mod. – Shog9♦ Dec 3 '11 at 1:54
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    @dmckee but I did: A moderator has deleted this post. It cannot be undeleted. – tanascius Dec 3 '11 at 1:54
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    @tanascius I don't think that is unfortunate at all. – Andrew Barber Dec 3 '11 at 1:55
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    @Shog9 I am not even specifically interested in this SO-question, but it seems to be odd that there was a minority decision that can not be undone ... to me this seems wrong – tanascius Dec 3 '11 at 1:56
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    @tanascius: check out this page - it's stuff that's about to be deleted, and it's visible to any user with at least 10K reputation on SO (the same users who can vote to delete). If you see anything in that list that looks worth keeping, it'd be a good idea to vote to re-open it... – Shog9♦ Dec 3 '11 at 1:59
  • @Shog9: just re-read your suggestion. Voting to reopen is a bad workaround in my opinion. I'd like to vote against deletion, but it is OK for me, that this question is closed. A close is a lock and very different from a deletion. – tanascius Dec 6 '11 at 9:06
  • @tanascius: like it or not, closing is the first stage of deletion. Locking is something else, available only to moderators and intended to be used sparingly. If you don't think a question should be deleted, you can ask a moderator to lock it... But be prepared with a good explanation for why re-opening it would be inappropriate. – Shog9♦ Dec 6 '11 at 15:58
17

We have the rules we have in part because a category of inappropriate questions reliably garner tons of votes. And every day, it became ever-more-obsolete subjective crap. The sooner all these broken windows go away, the better.

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    My main reservation with this is that it's breaking a lot of links to content that a lot of people enjoy/find valuable. Breaking links unnecessarily is bad. To me, it would be preferable to lock these posts and remove these posts from all listings, but still let them be seen if you have a link. – Jeremy Banks Dec 3 '11 at 7:48
  • @JeremyBanks If somebody care of those questions, they could flag them asking the moderators to lock them. As it doesn't seem it happened, I guess nobody is caring for those questions. – kiamlaluno Dec 3 '11 at 16:16
  • @kiamlaluno I've flagged many questions for that reason. They were locked, but recently many of them have been unlocked by moderators who disagree. I sympathize because locking them is a pretty poor solution; if we do that then people will still see a bunch of broken windows when they look at the most popular posts on the site. That's why I'd prefer a "de-listing" option, or something like that. – Jeremy Banks Dec 3 '11 at 20:14

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