3 ms·
> I think the word "curate" is interesting here, as in, pick for emphasis. I think maybe a mistake that SO makes is to close or remove topics, rather than "deem
by Chaebixi 9y ago
> I think the word "curate" is interesting here, as in, pick for emphasis. I think maybe a mistake that SO makes is to close or remove topics, rather than "deemphasize" them.
Questions should also "age" and become deemphasized with time, especially for more popular topics. SO is getting old, with a lot of out-of-date stuff, and relying on manually closing topic to maintain quality isn't going to help with that. If stuff aged out, it would push the more recent stuff to the top. It would also increase engagement since there'd be space to answer the old questions in new ways without it being futile.
That's not to say the old answers are bad (people have to work on legacy stacks after all), but you should only find that stuff if you want it.
- radarsat1 9y agoTrue, it should be possible to flag information as old or obsolete without it being marked "wrong". Maybe similarly, there are cases where the specifics may be out of date but the idea or concepts are nonetheless valid. Perhaps it should be possible to mark answers as "timeless".
- shagie 9y agoA down vote is not marking it wrong. It is indicating that it is not useful (compared to other content?). As to "timeless" - consider that even such material can expire. The "timeless" information about how to simulate a closure in Java (valid from 1996 to 2014) is no longer timeless. The timeless material applicable for all versions of Python (until Python 3) would make it just as difficult to get rid of as a green checkmark next to the answer that someone found helpful at some point in the past. If you ever create a meta-moderator user script for Stack Overflow I'd be interested in seeing how well it works. The biggest problem being the volume of material that is coming in on a daily basis.