5 ms·

I'd be willing to bet that a Wikipedia link will outlast a StackExchange answer.

matheusmoreira 4y ago
It absolutely will. Some of my favorite answers on Stack Overflow have been deleted and there seems to be no archive for such lost data.
- cxcorp 4y ago
  I usually save my bookmarks on the Wayback Machine just so there's at least one copy out there.
- nerdponx 4y ago
  Stackoverflow itself retains all deleted questions and answers. If you have enough points you can see them.
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    How many points? Right now I have 16.7k.
    - nerdponx 4y ago
      Less than that for sure. Maybe you need to enable some setting, like on HN?
- kragen 4y ago
  Which ones were they?
  - matheusmoreira 4y ago
    One of my favorite answers was about programming languages written by a Jörg W Mittag. It was a comparison between shells like bash and proper programming languages and featured a huge table comparing syntax, showing how languages are supposed to scale up in complexity while shells are supposed to scale down. Never found it again on the site. Years ago I remember digging up a link to the question but got the 404 page when I followed it.
    - kragen 4y ago
      Aw. I really enjoy his answers in general. I wonder if the answer survives in an old data dump or in the Archive?
    - svat 4y ago
      I think I found the answer you mean! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting-languages-e-g-perl-python-and-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell/3640403#3640403 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scriptin... — the topic matches, there's a table comparing syntax (though I wouldn't call it huge), and it includes the idea of scaling up to large programs vs scaling down to 10 character programs. (The question was deleted in July 2014 and undeleted in December 2020: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/3637668/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/3637668/revisions , so right now anyone can see it. BTW with ≥10000 reputation one can see deleted posts, per https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges and https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools — e.g., as you mentioned you have ~16k points, try the much-mirrored "programmer joke" deleted question (linked from e.g. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76584 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76584).)
      - matheusmoreira 4y ago
        Yeah, that's the one. It must have been years since I tried looking for it. I didn't know it had been restored... Thanks for looking it up! I can see the programmer jokes question as well.

It absolutely will. Some of my favorite answers on Stack Overflow have been deleted and there seems to be no archive for such lost data.

cxcorp 4y ago
I usually save my bookmarks on the Wayback Machine just so there's at least one copy out there.
nerdponx 4y ago
Stackoverflow itself retains all deleted questions and answers. If you have enough points you can see them.
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  How many points? Right now I have 16.7k.
  - nerdponx 4y ago
    Less than that for sure. Maybe you need to enable some setting, like on HN?
kragen 4y ago
Which ones were they?
- matheusmoreira 4y ago
  One of my favorite answers was about programming languages written by a Jörg W Mittag. It was a comparison between shells like bash and proper programming languages and featured a huge table comparing syntax, showing how languages are supposed to scale up in complexity while shells are supposed to scale down. Never found it again on the site. Years ago I remember digging up a link to the question but got the 404 page when I followed it.
  - kragen 4y ago
    Aw. I really enjoy his answers in general. I wonder if the answer survives in an old data dump or in the Archive?
  - svat 4y ago
    I think I found the answer you mean! https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scripting-languages-e-g-perl-python-and-ruby-not-suitable-as-shell/3640403#3640403 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3637668/why-are-scriptin... — the topic matches, there's a table comparing syntax (though I wouldn't call it huge), and it includes the idea of scaling up to large programs vs scaling down to 10 character programs. (The question was deleted in July 2014 and undeleted in December 2020: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/3637668/revisions https://stackoverflow.com/posts/3637668/revisions , so right now anyone can see it. BTW with ≥10000 reputation one can see deleted posts, per https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges and https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools https://stackoverflow.com/help/privileges/moderator-tools — e.g., as you mentioned you have ~16k points, try the much-mirrored "programmer joke" deleted question (linked from e.g. https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76584 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/76584).)
    - matheusmoreira 4y ago
      Yeah, that's the one. It must have been years since I tried looking for it. I didn't know it had been restored... Thanks for looking it up! I can see the programmer jokes question as well.