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I've noticed that retag-requests are being deleted by Jeff. This seems like a new thing and not a good one.
I've seen two today that were both created by Evan (one, two) [10k only], which had a total of 14 upvotes. Now he's going to lose half his rep, when both requests were reasonable (and implemented).
Are we trying to kill all retag requests?
I feel that deleting these posts removes too much data from the historical record. Yes, the posts are visible to those with 10k reputation, but only if you have the exact URL handy. Can they simply be closed as [status-completed] and then locked to prevent reopening or deletion?
I agree... mostly. (That may surprise some people, but read on.)
I think it's entirely reasonable that some old requests can be deleted. Requests that are (a) trivial and (b) have resulted in tag synonym(s) being created aren't really relevant any more.
But the requests should meet both of these criteria to be candidates for deletion! Otherwise, we end up deleting valuable information that we may need later on, or removing a legitimate request which is not actually completed.
As I said below in a comment, the score of these posts has absolutely nothing to do with the value of the information the question contains. In fact, retag requests with the most information are lower-scoring. Why? People tend to pass over the complicated ones without reading. Since I've given a lot of answers in these questions, I definitely noticed that the more complicated my solution, the less votes I got on my answers, presumably because not many people want to read that stuff. (All this is totally fine, btw; I'm just saying what happens.)
<soapbox>
As far as I can tell, essentially zero thought went into this decision, and it certainly would never have gotten the community's blessing either. Given how Jeff tends to do whatever he wants and then ignores the backlash until people forget about it, maybe that was the whole point; I don't know.
</soapbox>
I'm all for site cleanup, but most of these deletions make absolutely no sense.
I believe it is because Jeff is deleting all the items which are no longer applicable. For items like feature requests, it is important that the original request (and meta discussion) exist for the historical record.
However, retag requests which are simple and completely without objection don't need a record. They become irrelevant and no longer necessary.
I agree we needed to clean-shop ... tons of the old stuff no longer applies and can go through the standard tag synonym UI.
There are a few scenarios new retag-requests still make sense
If the synonyms is more popular than the master, say, for example, you want c# retagged to csharp and can make a really good case for it.
If its a complicated chain and an existing synonym (proposed or active) is messing up a natural retag.
In general though I think we should just use the new system and vote on ones that make sense. Keep in mind we have approx ~600 pages of active tag synonyms and have completed well over 100 retags in the last few weeks. Its all working much better than it ever did.
I've deleted all retag requests with a score of 10 or lower, as I feel the new synonym system should capture the vast majority of such trivial/basic retags.
Now, if a new proposed retag synonym does require a lot of discussion, then I'm open to it being asked here.
