The community is going to delete yet another useful programming question, and I want to save and publish its content. I wonder, how the deletion of content affects attribution rules:
- Visually indicate that the content is from Stack Overflow, Meta Stack Overflow, Server Fault, or Super User in some way. It doesn’t have to be obnoxious; a discreet text blurb is fine. 2. Hyperlink directly to the original question on the source site (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/questions/12345) 3. Show the author names for every question and answer 4. Hyperlink each author name directly back to their user profile page on the source site (e.g., https://stackoverflow.com/users/12345/username)
However, deleting content arises some questions about necessity and the way the rules are applied:
- Stack Overflow community explicitly stated that it doesn't want the content to belong to the site. Why should I attribute it to the site then (rule 1)?
- If I hyperlink to the original question (rule 2), then a lot of users who follow the link, won't see anything but 404-like error (since they don't have 10k+ rep), and will report broken links, and just get confused. How do I handle this? Perhaps, I shouldn't link there at all?
- It may be offensive to state that an author's content was deleted. Everyone thinks that moderation on Stack Overflow is sane, and deletion of content usually means that the user posted incorrect answer (and deleted it himself), spam or flame. It could be shameful for people to be listed as authors of deleted content. So, should I follow the rule 3?
- Hyperlinking to profiles of the authors (rule 4) leads to more confusion, since it looks like lies: I claim that they answered (or asked) the question, while their profiles don't support this claim.
So, I have doubts that I can apply any of the attribution rules for deleted content. How do I copy it then--and can I?