2

Earlier, I flagged a question for migration to Ask Different, here:
Graphical Diff For Mac OSX?

My logic was that this question had valuable answers, and was quite popular (489 upvotes, 134 stars), but was obviously off topic for SO.

Instead, Andrew Barber came in and nuked the question entirely. In my opinion, this a scenario where even a historical lock would have been better than a nuke, as this is a great aggregation of tools for SO

It is, however, possible that the flag was mis-read, so I'll post a screenshot of it below:

enter image description here

Please, can we have some limit to the nuking of questions that have more than say 100 upvotes? Maybe require two moderators to take action when deletin a question like this, but this type of content should NOT be deleted, even if off topic.

Improve this question
15
  • 14
    228k views. I'd say that's worthy of a historical lock.
    – Mysticial
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:38
  • 4
    Yes, please. This is why we have an historical lock. Deleting good content is antithetical to this site's stated goal of "making the internet better." And the lock prevents them from becoming "broken windows."
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:38
  • 14
    These old, closed, guaranteed to become out of date shopping questions? Yeah, keep those around.
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:41
  • 2
    I can see how you want that migrated since Ask Different seems to accept those types of questions. But it's older than 60 days.
    – Mysticial
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:42
  • 1
    @Anthony thats why I wanted it migrated to a more appropriate site. Those questions are a bit more frequent over there.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:42
  • 1
    Related: Disable migration for questions older than 60 days
    – blahdiblah
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:42
  • 1
    @Richard - migrating old questions is generally frowned upon in general, fyi—even if the question isn't otherwise off topic for SO.
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:43
  • Yes, but this question was already a CW. No reputation losses would occur.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:43
  • @RichardJ.RossIII, there's an appropriate site on the SE network for old, closed, out-of-date shopping questions? Has the world come to this>
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:44
  • @Anthony - OP asked that the question be given an historical lock, not be re-opened. I wouldn't call that "keeping around"—except perhaps in a myopic sense.
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:45
  • 1
    @AnthonyPegram indeed, according to apple.SE's FAQ: third-party hardware and software for Apple products. This falls under that category.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:45
  • 5
    @AdamRackis, historical locks might be good for content that is still useful 10 years from now. I don't think a list of software tools from 2008-2011 are quite so useful in 2023, unless we aim to be the next internet archive site.
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 29, 2013 at 0:48
  • 2
    @Anthony - I don't think lack of usefulness 10 years from now is a good reason to remove content completely. Otherwise why don't we start nuking this stuff
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:12
  • 5
    If I thought I could get away with it...
    – Anthony Pegram
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:19
  • @AdamRackis: Or this stuff
    – Lightness Races in Orbit
    Jul 18, 2013 at 9:18

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
18

I'm not so sure this is a good question to keep around. Here's a few reasons why:

  • Barely any inbound links that aren't from content farms
  • Not well maintained (the answers are a mess, and no one has even tried to collect them into one answer in over 4 years)

On the other hand, it does have a lot of page views, and it maybe has useful information? Google has plenty of links for 'Mac Diff tools', so I don't think we're filling a void that isn't otherwise already filled.

I'm on the fence on this one. If we lock it, then the answers will quickly go out of date, and if we just leave it closed, someone will attempt to re-open it and we'll have to keep an eye on it (not something I'm fond of).

It had its day. I just don't think this one is in good enough shape to keep around.

EDIT: As another user pointed out in the comments, it looks like Ask Different already has its own version of this question.

  1. Get 10K on Stack Overflow
  2. Answer question on Ask Different with a list of all diff tools listed on Stack Overflow, plus all the curated answers from Ask Different.
  3. PROFIT.
Improve this answer
17
  • 2
    Why isn't migration an option here? I understand that there may be issues with migration on non-CW posts with reputation, but that shouldn't be an issue in this case, should it? And you cannot tell me that the mods absolutely don't have a way to migrate this to another SE site where it will be maintained.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:16
  • 3
    @RichardJ.RossIII I'm telling you we do not have the ability to migrate that post even if we wanted to. To your second point, this question hasn't been well maintained in 4 years, why would that change if it were undeleted?
    – George Stocker
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:18
  • 1
    Because Apple.SE's focus is those types of questions. They encourage and nourish them.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:19
  • 1
    @RichardJ.RossIII migration is disabled on questions that are more than 60 days old.
    – nhinkle
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:20
  • @RichardJ.RossIII The only people who could even possibly do it is the SE community team, and I'm not sure they would.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:21
  • Really? Im surprised that they don't allow mods to do that. I can understand why 3k users can't, but not mods. Very odd indeed.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:21
  • @RichardJ.RossIII you can read all about the reasoning here on the original Meta proposal for the 60 day limit.
    – nhinkle
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:22
  • 9
    If Ask Diff nourished and wanted them it would have asked its own version in the years since it's been up instead of looking to poach old outdated material from other sites apple.stackexchange.com/questions/10099/… @ric
    – random
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:22
  • 1
    @random Obviously, apple.SE doesn't have the user-base of SO. However, if it had more inbound links from that question I'm confident that it would be better maintained. It's a chicken & egg scenario.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:27
  • Deleting the SO version is in the best interest then so that it no longer takes any search engine hits, allowing Ask Diff to potentially take over the rankings @ric
    – random
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:30
  • So shopping questions ARE on topic somewhere in the SE network!!!
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:30
  • 1
    @Richard - random is right here, and I don't often say that. Apple.SE has their own version of the question up and active, so this one should probably just die a quiet death.
    – Adam Rackis
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:31
  • 2
    @AdamRackis yes, they are. When you have a website dedicated to a company/os, there's only so much you can talk about hardware wise without getting into different software reccomendations.
    – Richard J. Ross III
    Mar 29, 2013 at 1:31
  • 1
    Reopen votes expire, so I don't think there's much of a danger of it getting reopened. After all, it's been closed for over a year and hasn't been reopened yet despite its high number of views
    – Rachel
    Mar 29, 2013 at 12:21
  • 2
    @RichardJ.RossIII But you forgot step 3: PROFIT. You made it CW.
    – George Stocker
    Mar 29, 2013 at 13:46

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .