7 ms·

I wish SO had the courage of its convictions and stopped all locked pages from being seen by search engines. That way unhelpful links wouldn't waste people's t

I wish SO had the courage of its convictions and stopped all locked pages from being seen by search engines. That way unhelpful links wouldn't waste people's time when searching for answers.

eitland 7y ago
Problem is a good number of helpful pages has ben locked. Removing it would remove thebonly good answer to that question from the Internet.
- mentat 7y ago
  Which is the OP's point, that they shouldn't be locked.
  - protomyth 7y ago
    Yep. If it's locked then it shouldn't be useful. If it's locked and useful then there is a problem.
    - eitland 7y ago
      This is the thing we are pointing out: Again and again we found that Stack Overflow would try to get rid of some of the most helpful ages I had found. For a while, more often than not it seemed, if you found a helpful answer it was locked or somehow on its way to destruction. I don't see this as often anymore but I also don't see that many good results in my search engine anymore and I don't know if it is because search engines has become more and more useless or if it is because Stack Overflow deleted a good chunk of the most useful questions they had. Possibly a combination if I had to guess :-/
  - eitland 7y ago
    Here is what OP wrote : > I wish SO had the courage of its convictions and stopped all locked pages from being seen by search engines. That way unhelpful links wouldn't waste people's time when searching for answers. Something completely different in my opinion.
kelnos 7y ago
The problem is that I often land on a locked SO question, and it's actually incredibly helpful, leading me to wonder why it was locked in the first place.
- protomyth 7y ago
  As mentat pointed out, it shouldn't be locked.
  - kelnos 7y ago
    "Shouldn't" is irrelevant; I run into plenty that are, and it's a shame.
- shagie 7y ago
  The stack overflow model works well for a certain type of question. Part of this is the reaction to the resources of 2008 - trying to find things on page 15 of the a thread in the Java community forums. While there are many possibly helpful questions that could be asked, not all of them are a fit for the format. That was a design choice made on day 1 and is backed deeply into how the software works and the way people interact with it. Still, people asked those questions. The problem is that while they are interesting questions, and everyone wants to answer them - that reduces their value while at the same time putting more work on the community to try to keep it useful. Look at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-... and consider the challenge of keeping it useful and relevant. If you were to try to add an answer to that post (if it weren't locked and closed), would you read through all 296 answers to make sure you weren't repeating someone else? Some of these questions were recognized as taking more time of the people trying to maintain the site and focus on the questions that it handles well and were locked. The other option would have been to delete them, but stack overflow tends to have a "we don't delete useful content or break the web" philosophy. There are other sites that handle the types of questions that Stack Overflow doesn't handle well quite well themselves. Quora does anecdotes well. Slant.co does comparisons. And so on.
  - 7y ago

I wish SO had the courage of its convictions and stopped all locked pages from being seen by search engines. That way unhelpful links wouldn't waste people's time when searching for answers.

eitland 7y ago

Problem is a good number of helpful pages has ben locked. Removing it would remove thebonly good answer to that question from the Internet.

mentat 7y ago
Which is the OP's point, that they shouldn't be locked.
- protomyth 7y ago
  Yep. If it's locked then it shouldn't be useful. If it's locked and useful then there is a problem.
  - eitland 7y ago
    This is the thing we are pointing out: Again and again we found that Stack Overflow would try to get rid of some of the most helpful ages I had found. For a while, more often than not it seemed, if you found a helpful answer it was locked or somehow on its way to destruction. I don't see this as often anymore but I also don't see that many good results in my search engine anymore and I don't know if it is because search engines has become more and more useless or if it is because Stack Overflow deleted a good chunk of the most useful questions they had. Possibly a combination if I had to guess :-/
- eitland 7y ago
  Here is what OP wrote : > I wish SO had the courage of its convictions and stopped all locked pages from being seen by search engines. That way unhelpful links wouldn't waste people's time when searching for answers. Something completely different in my opinion.

kelnos 7y ago

The problem is that I often land on a locked SO question, and it's actually incredibly helpful, leading me to wonder why it was locked in the first place.

protomyth 7y ago
As mentat pointed out, it shouldn't be locked.
- kelnos 7y ago
  "Shouldn't" is irrelevant; I run into plenty that are, and it's a shame.
shagie 7y ago
The stack overflow model works well for a certain type of question. Part of this is the reaction to the resources of 2008 - trying to find things on page 15 of the a thread in the Java community forums. While there are many possibly helpful questions that could be asked, not all of them are a fit for the format. That was a design choice made on day 1 and is backed deeply into how the software works and the way people interact with it. Still, people asked those questions. The problem is that while they are interesting questions, and everyone wants to answer them - that reduces their value while at the same time putting more work on the community to try to keep it useful. Look at https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-c https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9033/hidden-features-of-... and consider the challenge of keeping it useful and relevant. If you were to try to add an answer to that post (if it weren't locked and closed), would you read through all 296 answers to make sure you weren't repeating someone else? Some of these questions were recognized as taking more time of the people trying to maintain the site and focus on the questions that it handles well and were locked. The other option would have been to delete them, but stack overflow tends to have a "we don't delete useful content or break the web" philosophy. There are other sites that handle the types of questions that Stack Overflow doesn't handle well quite well themselves. Quora does anecdotes well. Slant.co does comparisons. And so on.
- 7y ago