Should the 10k no-delete grace period of closed questions match the on-hold period?

Question

I'm normally not one to suggest features conceived from summat other than mechanical or philosophical conflict, or something not coming from observed metrics (indeed I have no reason to believe we have an extant problem with deletion in betwixt 2 days and 5 days) but this here just feels... extremely unintuitive to me.

We offer 2 days after a question is closed before it is eligible for deletion by users with at least 10,000 reputation. This allows it to stay visible to all parties and allow saner discussion of the merits of a question - it is breathing room for editing and reopening. The main point of this is that not every closure is something that should be deleted, and so salvageable content should be repaired and reopened. Should the question fail to be patched up, though, it reaches the other inevitable end of closure, that of deletion.

We offer 5 days after a question is closed where the question is marked "on hold". This adds a mechanical quirk of putting it in review when edited during this period and also is more welcoming to users - it is an indication of the possibility for editing and reopening. The main point of this is that not every closure is something that should be deleted , and so salvageable content should be repaired and reopening. Should the question fail to be patched up, though, it reaches the other inevitable end of closure, that of deletion.

If the above weren't clear enough, I think it would be better if these time periods were identical. On hold is not a literal grace period, but in expression to users, especially the author of the question, it comes across as one. It's meant to be this sort of "It's not too late" time that indicates that you can, indeed, do something to stick around. And those things that it is indicating to the user that can be done, that's entirely what the actual no-delete grace period exists for.

Neither number is arbitrary in its design, however. 2 days was selected because it's a decent time to house discussion about a question, but it's short enough to help rout out krutz that has no place on the site. This is of more importance on the smaller sites that won't have enough 20,000 reputation users to clear these instantly. 5 days was selected because it's a lengthy period that feels very welcoming and gives a fair chance for a question's defense, but it's strict and settled that it comes to an end.

This comes to how it flows intuitively. On-hold is the visible of the two, due to being the one visible on the question to all people in big letters. The fact that a question can't be deleted within the first 48 hours is, in fact, invisible to anyone who lacks the privileges to vote for deletion and does not yet know this rule (which is documented, to give it credit). All in all it feels awkward that we have a period of time that exists to enable editing/reopening, and a period of time that exists to indicate that editing/reopening is a thing that can be done, and them being different periods of time is what feels awkward. As the on-hold period is the visible of the two, I suggest that the period be 5 days.

This still strikes me about from a weird direction, though, as there's no mechanical issue here or even an anecdotal tale of sorrow of some poor orphan's question being burned to dust, like her home once was, not but two days after she was informed that it was on hold. All the same, the complete lack of intuitive time matching between two concepts which are otherwise completely linked, seems like something that should be fixed. Do you agree?

Answer 1

On principle, matching these up makes a lot more sense. Overall this is probably the best way to go. As a general pattern, deletion should be available at or just after the grace period given to the OP to fix it.

However I know from the trenches that sometimes questions come along that you just know need to go. There is no point in encouraging the OP to fix them or letting anybody hold out hope that things will get better. They just need to go. They are kruft that just messes the place up. Having a short-cycle way to get rid of these makes a lot of sense, and its' always nice when users get to do this stuff without dumping it on the mods.

This is, after all, a 10k priv we're talking about. Do those guys really need 5 days to figure out that some questions are never going to be viable?

In other words, I'm on the fence. Simplicity vs versatility.

Answer 2

Since there are good arguments both for and against extending the deletion prevention period, what about something that splits the difference?

Alter the deletion voting process to hold all non-moderator delete votes in abeyance until the on hold period expires. At that time, if there are sufficient votes to delete the question, do so.

This matches the no delete period with the on hold period, which simply makes a great deal of sense, as argued in the question and other answers. At the same time, it doesn't prevent trusted users from identifying and voting on questions which ought to be deleted, which is important to be able to do promptly. It avoids any sort of messy notifications requiring them to come back and vote later; delete votes remain fire and forget. Indeed, it opens up the possibility of shortening the no delete voting period, though whether that's appropriate is another discussion.

A strong argument against this idea is the (I presume) technical difficulty in implementing it to perform efficiently.

Answer 3

that would really suck if you posted a question on Friday, and came back on Monday to a Deleted question. I agree that it should be lengthened, 2 days is a short period of time compared to how old some questions are. some people might take the Friday example and say something like " you don't get on the internet over the weekend?" well if this was a frustrating thing for you and you use the SO sites as a last resort, hoping that someone will come along with just the right answer, or even give you some time to think about the question or a possible solution.

i do agree that there are questions out there, where the user needs to be slapped with the Faq book, or the Stack Rules, or how to form a relevant question, or better yet they need to be shown how Google works.

the question really is, is it going to hurt to have a bad question out there for 3 more days? or can we stomach it so that the silly half drunk person can sober up and rephrase the question?

Answer 4

I think the simplicity of having the "on hold" period and the deletion delay be identical is a very good argument to change this. They both have the same purpose and meaning, they are meant to indicate that a question can still be salvaged and they are meant to prevent a question from being deleted before it can be edited into shape. I think matching those two time frames makes a lot of sense.

That said, I tend to make heavy use of my moderator privileges in deleting questions whenever I see fit (especially on Skeptics) if I consider the questions to be impossible to reopen. I intentionally avoid doing this too early, but I might remove questions still inside the 5 day window.

I think the removal of questions should be tackled from the other side in any case. Removing very new questions is often not a good idea as they might be saved and reopened, immediate deletion is something that should be reserved for spam and the occasional WTF-completely-off-topic-how-did-that-guy-ever-think-of-posting-it-here question. But there should be a mechanism in place to remove old, closed questions. The more aggressive automatic deletions are a good start, but I still think that a review queue for this purpose might be useful.