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A refinement of the FAQ comments (this is why they're comments not actual FAQ questions/answers)...
It's one thing for someone to add their pronouns to a new post. If they volunteer them, we're asking that you leave them - for now. This is considered a temporary situation while we review our tools and see if there's a way we can easily support pronouns ...
22
Yes, that's what comments are for.
Use comments to ask for clarification or add more information.
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Is such behavior considered correct?
No, it isn't; it's utterly unacceptable. If you see behaviour like this, flag the user for moderation attention (they're not likely to stop if you leave a comment). The Help Center clearly states when it's appropriate to make an edit:
Tiny, trivial edits are discouraged - try to make the post significantly better when ...
17
We appreciate it greatly when people take the time to answer old, forgotten questions, but there are a few things you can do to improve the chances of having your efforts rewarded.
Answer questions in popular tags. It looks like you're targeting the aiml tag from the examples you posted. That's fine if that's what you know, but it's a very low traffic tag (...
15
Absolutely!
If you would flag a 4-second-old post for an issue, there is no reason you shouldn't flag a 4-year-old post.
My reasoning is that both are indexed by Google - old posts don't get thrown down a black hole. If there are issues in a post, people will see them - and it reflects badly on the site. Therefore, these issues should be taken care of, just ...
15
At which age or upvotes question becomes historical significant enough not to vote to close?
Never. If it's no longer an on-topic and good question for the site, vote to close it. That doesn't mean it needs to be deleted. It doesn't imply the OP is a terrible user who has no clue how to predict the future. All it says is "Such questions shouldn't be asked (...
14
Is there no rule for grandfathering in early questions?
There is no such rule. When the standards change they are applied retroactively to all existing questions. Many such questions happen to go for long periods of time without being noticed, but if someone does notice them they are entirely within their rights to vote to close, or do whatever other ...
14
Why would someone want to answer a question that is old and has an accepted answer without bringing anything new and useful to the table?
The only good reason I can think of is that they think they are bringing something new and useful to the table. You might disagree, and they may be wrong in thinking that, but it's the only good reason to post an answer ...
13
I'm not sure it'll be appropriate to ask a new question, since I understand it'll be a duplicate.
Then make it not a duplicate. "How do I solve X?" is the current question, to which the answer is "Y". So you wanna ask, "How do I solve X when Y doesn't work?"
To be more specific, you'd want to describe in detail how the author's technique of prescaling ...
13
What's the point in this behavior?
To improve the posts.
For example, in a recent edit, that user edited the title to fix a grammar mistake, and added relevant tags to the question.
While sometimes edits are too minor, edits of title and adding/removing tags are usually good even for old questions/answers. And surely there's no harm in it.
answered May 9 '20 at 13:17
Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2
151k27 gold badges362 silver badges732 bronze badges
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The question will be added to the Suggested Edits review queue for anyone to review. It depends how many are currently in the queue to begin with, but it doesn't get assigned to any specific person, it just gets added to the list.
You can ask questions about questions here on Meta (that's one of the things Meta is for), but not on the main site. That site is ...
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You can promote the answer from outside the site. For example, a blog entry can tell the story of how back in 2012 when [link] was asked, there really wasn't a good way to handle things. It can paraphrase the other answers and then -tada!- reveal the exciting new development that enables things to be better now. Folks who follow that link (you can link ...
10
What you should do here is just flag the question for moderator attention and let them know what's going on. There are far more legitimate uses for the behavior to stay as is than edge cases where one can abuse it, so it makes much more sense to simply stop the person that's doing so.
There are checks in place to discourage people from bumping by editing ...
10
Instead of editing I would have left a comment to give the OP a chance to fix and/or add additional info.
Downvoting posts that are not (longer) correct is perfectly OK, that is where downvotes are for.
You would serve that question and the community better if you provide an answer to that question that would be correct today. Maybe the OP of the ...
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You’re asking the million dollar question(s)… it’s also something that we are struggling with as the network grows and it’s something that we are actively discussing and working on.
The purpose of the sites is to have a great repository of questions and answers. Some answers as you’ve pointed out tend to go out-of-date as technology changes. That, however, ...
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The tooltip for downvoting an answer is:
This answer is not useful
If an answer is no longer useful then I think it should be downvoted even if it was useful at some earlier time.
Then, as commented by @PatrickHofman:
Downvoting might also encourage the author to update their answer.
and thereby encourage them to be re-upvoted (perhaps higher than ...
9
First off, if it meets close criteria vote to close it. This particular question, while it meets several criteria, probably fits best as "Primarily Opinion Based", which it has since been closed as. There really isn't any question about whether or not to close it. Historical locks come into play more to deal with:
People constantly trying to reopen ...
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Should such questions be protected from closure/deletion? What are the guidelines for reviewers on such questions?
No, go ahead and close them.
They may have been OK at the time they were posted, but they're not up to our current standards. There's no "against the rules" here, and you're not "banning" anything - you're just closing a question that is ...
9
It indicates to users that these types of questions aren't allowed. It makes it harder for people's questions that do get closed to just start linking to other similar open questions. If all of the other similar questions are closed it makes the message that they aren't allowed clear.
It prevents further answerers from coming along adding more answers. ...
9
In my opinion, if a post is "obsolete" (i.e. the issue it addresses does not exist anymore or there are better ways to do it in more recent versions), the best thing to do is to edit the post to put a note along the lines of "This only applies to version 5.12 and earlier". This is more informative and less harsher than editing it to say "This is obsolete".
...
9
If a question or answer still needs improvement then I do not think that it matters how old it is when the next comment is made there.
I would rather see the odd unseen comment made, rather than have a comment discouraged from being made where a clarification sought belatedly might lead to a post becoming more upvoted due to its having been improved.
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What to do with obsolete posts that are no more correct?
There is no one solution as it depends on situation and just how obsolete the answer is (is it outdated and just needs a minor edit to fine tune it or is it completely wrong and dangerous, or is it somewhere in between). How you proceed also depends on your comfort level with the topic and your own ...
8
There is a timeline, which you can access using the following URL:
http://sitename/posts/<question_ID>/timeline
And a way to go to the latest activity is to add /?lastactivity to the URL, like this:
http://sitename/questions/<question_ID>/title/?lastactivity
But the timeline says that the latest activity is on Nov 15 '13, it's very likely ...
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Bounty:
There is even a whole reason for this:
answered Dec 19 '16 at 11:36
Shadow Wizard Wearing Mask V2
151k27 gold badges362 silver badges732 bronze badges
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Yes! There's even a badge for that!
Answered a question more than 60 days later with score of 5 or more. This badge can be awarded multiple times.
Answering an old question bumps it up to the top of the "active" list again, so then more people can see it. If you provide a very good quality answer to an old question, it will most likely get some upvotes.
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You can post a bounty on the question. This will indirectly draw attention to the answers, including new ones, which will encourage voting.
A bounty on an old question will often draw extra attention to newer answers, as well (at least it does for me).
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It is up to you whether you decide to respond or not. I think it is important to respond so that the user knows what the deal is on the SE network.
My answer to that kind of comment is that I've not voted to close the other questions because I've not encountered them yet.
Sometimes the claim is actually:
You cannot close my question for reason X unless ...
7
The possible duplicate you identified is about a case where the question didn't have much engagement or value, and the answer there was to either edit or close it. That characterization doesn't seem to apply to your current question; 16k views and several answers means it's probably helping people, or at least signals that there are lots of people ...
6
Old questions should be fixed, even if it's minor.
The restrictions apply to all questions, old and new - any old question that doesn't comply should be fixed. The fact that some old questions don't comply doesn't mean anything - it's only because there's no safe, easy way to fix all of them in batch.
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That question is too localized anyway. It's over four years old, and some of the answers are based on experiences the answerers had years before.
Even if it had value at the time it was written, it hasn't been maintained in a comprehensive enough way that someone could make a good decision based on it today.
Further, comparing the two compilers has little ...
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