Why was the "How to launch a missile" question deleted? [closed]

Question

There was a funny question ("How to launch a missile?"), highly upvoded by the community, that was closed and almost reopened before I went to bed. I woke up today to the fact that it was wiped off the face of the planet. It still shows up in Google Cache, but now Stack Overflow won't show it to me. Did the moderators decide to leave their sense of humor at home today and nuke it?

Answer 1

Yes, it was deleted by one of the mods (I'll let him speak up if he wants), and I congratulate him for it.

Frankly I find very few of these so-called "humor" questions funny at all. The fact that 82 people voted it up only proves that 82 Stack Overflow users would laugh at Bob Saget. Even if they are genuinely funny, they add no value to Stack Overflow as a Q&A site, so please don't complain when they get closed/deleted.

(Go ahead and downvote me for being a bitter old crank; I don't care, I'm leaving this post where it is.)

Answer 2

I'm not a 10K user (so I can't see the original/deleted), and I can't find it in Google's cache. (Though I do see it on search results.) The little text I have from Google reads:

I am working on an open-source missile launcher application. ... The people who closed this question should go back and read the SO FAQ: "bring your sense of ...

I'm going to guess that it was originally closed as "off topic." It may have also garnered offensive/spam votes.

The reality is that while a sense of humor is a good idea, it takes a lot to get something like that by the community. I'd have voted to shut it down in a heartbeat. It's obviously nothing but a noisy joke, and thus doesn't even provide much in the way of entertainment value to the community.

And before you mention other classic jokes on SO:

1. They are few and far between
2. Most are very old
3. The closest I can come to an example this "out there" is Boat Programming -- and that, too, was obliterated with extreme prejudice.

Answer 3

This question:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2711757/how-can-i-launch-a-missile

is only available to 10k+ users, because it was deleted by Marc Gravell, a moderator.

It was deleted because it wasn't really programming related, and while humorous, really wasn't an acceptable question for Stack Overflow. While funny questions are alright sometimes, the community generally discourages them.

He posted the following comment before deleting it:

Humour is one thing, but this simply isn't a sensible question. – Marc Gravell♦

If enough people want the question back, it can be undeleted by three users with over 10k reputation.

Answer 4

You should of asked this question at the beginning of the month. Joke questions are tolerated one day out of the year.