What should we do with old, very popular closed questions?

Question

Motivated by the deletion of

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/78756/what-do-you-use-to-keep-notes-as-a-developer-closed
• Email Validation - Regular Expression

On one hand, I disagree with these closures, because:

1. These questions were (and still are) very popular
2. They have some good information in them (or at least the first one does) and it feels like bad sportsmanship to remove good information from the internet, particularly when it was contributed by your fellow users

Number 2 in particular bothers me. A lot.

On the other hand, I do agree that:

1. The community of 10k users should be able to decide which closed questions they wish to delete on their own without me intervening
2. These questions should definitely remain closed, because they either have an absurd # of answers, or are duplicates (though some duplicates need to stick around). Which means they are eligible for deletion … forever.
3. These questions wouldn't survive more than 10 minutes if asked today on Stack Overflow, so in some ways they are artifacts from the past, like dinosaurs in an era of mammals.

There is some related discussion in:
Should popular questions be so easy to delete?
People abusing deleting questions?

While I normally favor code solutions here, I am not sure I like the idea that once a question gets 400 upvotes it should become extremely difficult to delete. It feels like mob rule.

Official policy on the blog:

The Stack Overflow Question Lifecycle

Answer 1

I wasn't going to post on this, but I've noticed one item missing from this discussion, and it's the magical ability of diamond mods only: That of locking a post.

Certainly, for our historical posts which we don't necessarily want to delete, but also don't necessarily want to encourage copycats in the future (EG, the polls), a lock with an edit by the diamond mod who's locking it might go a long way. For example, placing a disclaimer similar to the following at the top of the post:

This post is from the early days of [Stack Overflow|Server Fault|Super User], and while we recognize its historical significance, we also recognize that the current community of users will likely close similar posts. Please feel free to read and learn from this post, but refrain from creating similar posts just because this one exists.

Just a thought. It gets us past the "deletion" problem (IE, continuing to provide to Google Juice and historic reference we all love), while also discouraging future users from citing this as a reason their off-topic and typically closed question should remain.

As a further bonus -- this one just occurred to me -- locking makes it really difficult for the post to "bump" -- only Community will be able to do that, as no new answers, no new comments, not even edits are available.

Answer 2

For poll and GTKY questions, I think you need to take more into account than just the number of views and/or votes. Personally, I'd like to know:

1. Are there a lot of inbound links?
2. Are there a lot of inbound searches?
3. Has the question and/or answers collected a steady stream of votes over time, or was it amazingly popular for a few days/weeks only to die off soon after.

Much as I hate to say it, a question that brings in a lot of new eyes is probably worth keeping around... Even if we're then faced with slapping down all the "me too" questions arising as a result of it. On the other hand, a weekend "blowing off steam and getting to know your fellow coders" question probably doesn't do anyone any good: the users involved already had their fun, and now it's just one more thing for new users to point to when they try to do likewise and are stopped.

I kinda like the idea of locking a question when it garners more than a hundred answers. Automating that might be too much, but encouraging moderators to do it manually could go along way towards a compromise between deleting popular topics and endless noise. Locked, fossilized relics could avoid the deletion of valuable content without encouraging further participation...

Answer 3

Deletion is harmful overkill; we need a new alternative.

There's never been a real consensus on this issue, and I think the limitations of the Stack Exchange software are to blame: we're forced to choose between (1) leaving broken windows here or (2) creating broken links on other sites (this is particularly likely for popular questions). Neither of these are desirable.

How often is it actually necessary that content be made entirely inaccessible? We should have the alternative of delisting questions throughout the site while letting them remain accessible to anyone who follows a direct link.

Delisted questions would otherwise behave like questions that that have been locked and deleted. A background color and notice would make it clear that they're not meant to represent the site. They could even be noindexed and removed from search if you wanted to absolutely minimize their impact.

This might seem like a lot of trouble and complexity but, as was discussed in podcast 27, it's important to preserve the web when possible. Stack Overflow shouldn't be breaking links and taking content off the web without a good reason.

Answer 4

Perhaps there needs to be some sort of protection around these dinosaurs? Maybe based on number of votes and or answers?

I feel similar to you Jeff - I don't like the idea of removing good information from the internet. For me it is an historical question - those dinsoaurs from the wild west days of SO (to mix metaphors horribly), while no longer being alive, they are part of the history of SO and of the internet.

I'd hope that the site can keep that history so that in 10 years time we can go back and chuckle at our past selves.

I do think it needs to be some sort of code solution, since the social dynamic actually changes, and the meaning to a certain reputation changes. It used to be that 10k users had been around for a long time and had attachment to the history of the site, but that of course is going to become less true over time.

That said - this answer is just me wanting my preference to be enshrined - everyone has bias, so to remove that bias, just basing it purely on reputation and the voting power associated with that makes sense.

Still, sometimes, the majority is wrong. AND - it is your baby Jeff, so your bias has to have some additional weight.

Answer 5

For duplicates

Have you considered a 301 redirect for (closed,deleted,duplicate) questions. You already have merge so if any information needs to be merged to the original it can be. There really is no value in the second example living as 2 entry points to the site.

For polls of doom

I was only half joking when I said we need a polloverflow for all your polling needs. But perhaps the info should be rolled up into a cohesive answer and shipped to a wiki section.

Answer 6

Yes

Burninate them!

Old questions that have no place¹ on Stack Overflow² — like “how do I pick my nose as a programmer” or “favorite programmer manga” or “MUMPS-11 tips and tricks” — should be deleted. Keeping them around is bad for Stack Overflow, because:

• The list questions (such as tips-and-tricks) might contain useful information, but it's drowned in the mass. The information should instead be posted on individual, searchable questions.
• The off-topic questions (“as a programmer”) have no lasting value. We have chat now.
• These highly upvoted questions are what new users tend to flock to. They do not inspire confidence in the quality of the sight. Yawn, yet another forum. Pass.
• Bad questions are regularly put forward as an example of why we should have more bad questions (the bad question copycat of the day).

Keeping them locked on the site is not a good idea, because it doesn't do anything towards fixing any of the problems, and even exacerbates them. Locking prevents any community feedback against these questions (can't downvote, can't close, can't delete). Locking should be used to prevent problematic actions, not to prevent cleanup.

(Locking prevents answers. How is that useful? When there are 100 answers on a question, why does it matter that someone posts a 101st? If the 101st answer is presumed not useful, why would it be less useful than the previous ones?)

Sure, the contents of these threads might belong on the Internet somewhere. They might belong on the Stack Exchange network somewhere. But not on the main questions and answers sites. If you want to host a deleted.stackoverflow.com (reddit.stackoverflow.com?), fine. But please don't react to litter by putting a finely-crafted frame around it.

¹ _{Note that this does not necessarily apply to the email validation question. This one is different, because such a question definitely belongs on the site. Once, not once a week. Generally speaking, duplicates should remain, closed as such, though they can be deleted if they are not useful as additional search fodder.}
² _{Or any other SE site.}

Answer 7

I'm going to focus my answer on the second link (the answer to the duplicate question). I know the issue of what to do with duplicate questions has been rehashed many times, but I feel more needs to be said about this example.

Sorry, but I just don't think duplicates have much value...

The primary argument for why duplicates should be kept around can be found on Jeffs blog post on handling duplicates:

There’s often benefit to having multiple subtle variants of a question around, as people tend to ask and search using completely different words, and the better our coverage, the better odds our fellow programmers can find the answer they’re looking for.

So basically, the benefit of a duplicate is that it should make finding content easier, either because it allows for using different search terms or because the duplicates have a lot of views and a good ranking in Google.

This is a good idea in theory, and at first I agreed with it. However, I have yet to see any solid evidence in practice that keeping duplicates around does in fact make the duplicate content easier to find. The only evidence I see is that they aren't working, in that questions keep getting asked over and over again. If they were easier to find, people shouldn't keep asking them.

Here are a couple examples of such overly-duplicated questions:

• The example given in the question regarding using regex for parsing email adresses. You can search regex email address on SO and find numerous duplicates.
• The near weekly re-asking of the DIVs versus TABLEs question, which also has way too many duplicates.

If duplicates had their intended effect of making content easier to find, why are these questions still getting asked ad nauseum? Maybe people just aren't trying to search in the first place, in which case duplicates are useless.

As if duplicate questions weren't annoying enough, do we have to deal with duplicate answers too?

The second example in the question brings up another point: What incentive is there for people to close duplicates instead of just repost duplicate answers and reap more Rep and badges? And what's worse, the poster of that answer wasn't apparently satisfied with the hundreds of Rep and gold badge he got, he had to go and repost verbatim the same answer for another question 2 days later!

Not only is this very bad form, in my opinion, but it points out how some people may not even bother voting to close duplicates when they can get Rep by just copying content from another question. Instead of closing it and supplying a link to the duplicate, it just leads to more redundant clutter. It seems silly to award this behavior by allowing the duplicate to linger and the answers to gain votes that they don't really deserve.

Answer 8

I think, 10k users of the community should mark questions for deletion, but not actually delete them. Marked for deletion questions would then be reviewed, and if they contained useful information and answers, good structure and fully coverage (like the 1st example), leave them closed forever. If not, delete them.

Answer 9

We have something of an aristocracy on SO with diamond mods, 3K users and 10K users. The aristocracy can close and delete posts regardless of the will of the people. To some extent, this is actually a good thing. More trusted users who have spent more time on the site often know better than the newcomers what's best for the site. However, in cases like you pointed out, the will of the people is overwhelming and clear. These posts should be immune from high rep users. I'm not sure what the thresholds should be, but at some point questions should be delete-proof and even close-proof.