There's much discussion about deleted questions. One suggestion on how to deal with them is, delete them, but collect them in a separate archive. That seems to be being pondered by the SE team, but it is nowhere near implementation yet. Shog comments here:
[...] Right now, the archive is SO - locked, annotated and immutable. When there's something better, we'll adjust for that
So how about taking that literally and, for certain questions, showing them to everybody as they are shown to 10k+ users? That means, with the normal "deleted" look, completely locked, but still accessible to everyone.
Background: The way 10k+ users see deleted questions is like this:
the entire body has a greyish backdrop, clearly signaling that this question was deleted.
To help prevent confusion over why some deleted questions are inaccessible, and some are visible, there could be an additional banner on top saying something like,
This question was deleted for reasons of moderation. Because of great demand, we continue to display it here as a courtesy to the community. It is subject to removal at any time; if you feel it is worth preserving, please store it locally for your convenience.
How I think this would do good:
It would mellow down the indignation of non-10k+ users interested in the question. Currently, the question is withdrawn from them completely and more or less arbitrarily, following a mod or higher-rep user decision. I can see how that can make you angry - it feels pretty arrogant and in your face.
It would fix the link rot caused by these deletions. SO could still send a 404 (or a 410 gone) so the questions get withdrawn from the Google Index.
It would still clearly convey the message that the time for this kind of content on SO is over.
Let me be totally clear: this is not a proposal to make all deleted content accessible to the public. This is about battled, loved, high-traffic, high-vote questions only. The measure could be applied to those questions until such time as a decision is reached on an archive solution.
At the very least, it could be applied as a grace period of 30 or 60 days after deletion for any future deleted questions.
As to which questions to apply it to: I guess the simplest formula would be popularity - a mix of views and upvotes. Also, seeing as we are explicitly encouraged now to contest deletions on Meta, maybe those contestations would have to be taken into consideration to some extent. I don't know.
As to the threshold, that's tough to decide and would surely have to be a separate discussion.
It's far from being a long-term solution for anything, but it could be a short-term patch to ease the pain of deletions a little and help things until maybe one day an official archive comes into existence.
