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just a few months ago they closed a question of mine that I posted in 2010 (!), which in the meanwhile had gathered more than 1000 votes, nearly one million vie

by agos 1y ago

just a few months ago they closed a question of mine that I posted in 2010 (!), which in the meanwhile had gathered more than 1000 votes, nearly one million views, and 20 or so answers. I get it that it does not meet their most recent criteria, but closing a question after 15 years telling me to edit my question and read the comments on how it could be improved (there were none) sounds tone deaf and unnecessarily bureaucratic

Larrikin 1y ago
What was the question? If it is from 2010 and was a relevant question or answer then but has since become irrelevant or even wrong because the framework or language has moved on I actually support this kind of clean up. There are a lot of best practices that just don't apply anymore that far down the line. Even simple things like whats the best way to use a variable inside of a string in Python would have an outdated (and to most users, wrong) answer if it was from 2010.
- palata 1y ago
  > I actually support this kind of clean up. I don't understand the idea. Are you also in favour of deleting blog posts that are older than a couple years? There is a date next to the question...
  - Larrikin 1y ago
    Why would I want to go to a blog post that also describes the wrong way to do something? I never said delete anything, but deprecation warnings, closure, and subsequent SEO down ranking of formerly correct but now incorrect/irrelevant answers would be a huge improvement to StackOverflow. Somebody may need to to know the best way to handle permissions in Java on Android 6.0, but it absolutely should not be a top question or answer in 2025 unless somebody is specifically looking for it.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    Closing a question on Stack Overflow doesn't delete it or hide it from public view, so the comparison doesn't make sense. Closing an old, popular question only prevents it from receiving new answers and puts a banner at the top. The point is to avoid setting bad examples for new questions. The fact that a question was well received many years ago does not guarantee that it's in agreement with current policy. Additionally, we generally do not close old questions simply because they're "outdated", e.g. refer to deprecated libraries etc. We recognize that people are often stuck maintaining unsupported legacy systems, effectively indefinitely. We sometimes close questions because they refer to services (especially web APIs) that are no longer available. But overwhelmingly, when old popular questions get closed, it's because they're deemed to be no longer on topic for the site. Since a lot of people will see the question, we don't want them to get the wrong idea about what's topical. And, of course, it makes perfect sense to downvote things that used to be correct but are now incorrect. Practically speaking, this doesn't happen nearly enough; upvotes have a kind of inertia, and wrong answers are often evaluated by people who don't know they're wrong. By the way: about 89% of up/downvotes ever cast on Stack Overflow are up (https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/492368/total-upvotes-and-downvotes https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/492368/to...).

by agos 1y ago

Larrikin 1y ago

What was the question? If it is from 2010 and was a relevant question or answer then but has since become irrelevant or even wrong because the framework or language has moved on I actually support this kind of clean up. There are a lot of best practices that just don't apply anymore that far down the line. Even simple things like whats the best way to use a variable inside of a string in Python would have an outdated (and to most users, wrong) answer if it was from 2010.

palata 1y ago
> I actually support this kind of clean up. I don't understand the idea. Are you also in favour of deleting blog posts that are older than a couple years? There is a date next to the question...
- Larrikin 1y ago
  Why would I want to go to a blog post that also describes the wrong way to do something? I never said delete anything, but deprecation warnings, closure, and subsequent SEO down ranking of formerly correct but now incorrect/irrelevant answers would be a huge improvement to StackOverflow. Somebody may need to to know the best way to handle permissions in Java on Android 6.0, but it absolutely should not be a top question or answer in 2025 unless somebody is specifically looking for it.
- zahlman 1y ago
  Closing a question on Stack Overflow doesn't delete it or hide it from public view, so the comparison doesn't make sense. Closing an old, popular question only prevents it from receiving new answers and puts a banner at the top. The point is to avoid setting bad examples for new questions. The fact that a question was well received many years ago does not guarantee that it's in agreement with current policy. Additionally, we generally do not close old questions simply because they're "outdated", e.g. refer to deprecated libraries etc. We recognize that people are often stuck maintaining unsupported legacy systems, effectively indefinitely. We sometimes close questions because they refer to services (especially web APIs) that are no longer available. But overwhelmingly, when old popular questions get closed, it's because they're deemed to be no longer on topic for the site. Since a lot of people will see the question, we don't want them to get the wrong idea about what's topical. And, of course, it makes perfect sense to downvote things that used to be correct but are now incorrect. Practically speaking, this doesn't happen nearly enough; upvotes have a kind of inertia, and wrong answers are often evaluated by people who don't know they're wrong. By the way: about 89% of up/downvotes ever cast on Stack Overflow are up (https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/492368/total-upvotes-and-downvotes https://data.stackexchange.com/stackoverflow/query/492368/to...).