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There is a tendency among the new mods to retroactively close questions which were asked and answered years ago. Honestly, I don't get it. Here is a question o

by gnufied 11y ago

There is a tendency among the new mods to retroactively close questions which were asked and answered years ago. Honestly, I don't get it. Here is a question of mine for example (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-image-editing-tool-canvas-or-svg http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4701538/javascript-based-...). Leaving aside the question if the question is indeed off-topic, I don't know why anyone will come 4 years later and question intelligence of person asking the question and person answering it. Are these mods suddenly wiser than participants 4 years ago or here to stroke their ago?

mostlystatic 11y ago
I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. There used to be a question about popular programming blogs. To me it looked like a good and popular question, so I asked a similar one - which was then closed, because by then the consensus among the mods had moved on to discourage that kind of question.
- mistermann 11y ago
  > I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. Which brings us back to the original question: why isn't it welcome. Yes, I understand the very real requirement for SO to drift towards a forum, but I think they've drawn the line very far from the optimal place. Furthermore, the insane success of SO has largely killed off specialized forums where that type of very valuable conversation formerly took place. I wish SO would introduce a discussion forum site or "layer" (integrated into SO itself in some way). Jeff's motivation for SO was something along the lines of making the internet a better place - in my opinion, many of the current mod's actions are contrary to that initiative. SO is still a massive net benefit, but it could be better with a little common sense. "Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been reopened!" One would hope it would prompt some discussion and soul searching, but I expect not.
cardiffspaceman 11y ago
There is apparently a deep queue between the action of recommending that a question be closed, and when thwt recommendation is acted on. I have a question which admittedly, I put in the wrong section of the site. When I comolained about an anonymous, unexplained downvote, a helpful passerby left a comment that included useful advise, meta advice about where to post if I needed further help, and the observation that questions don't close as quickly as they should because the queue is too long.
- Shog9 11y ago
  This is one of my pet peeves as well; an awful lot of questions should be closed, but with a few exceptions it really doesn't do much good to close them years after the fact - that should be reserved for questions that time has proven are actually causing harm (attracting spam / misinformation / flame-wars) not everything that someone once thought was problematic but has been doing fine for many months anyway. Over the past year or so, we've altered the mechanics of close voting to encourage fast closure and discourage gradual accumulation of votes. If you're interested in the details, see: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250223/age-close-votes-after-14-days-regardless-of-views-allowing-recasting http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250223/age-close-vot...
cardiffspaceman 11y ago
When they decided to sprout the "sub-stack-overflows" they decided that each sub would have a topic. There is a sub for interetation of Jewish religious law, and you wouldn't post a programming question there. But if you mostly READ stackoverflow questions (on the subject of coding) and you have a question about using PGP commandline options, you're not supposed to post it on stackoverflow just because it's the one you read most. That would be a superuser question (probably).
- techdragon 11y ago
  Except these stupidly small pockets of further subculture division generate less and less useful answers.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Especially if you get shunted around different sites. A question about a *nix software on an Apple device? That could be superuser, or unix, or askdifferent, or maybe the ubuntu one whatever that's called.

by gnufied 11y ago

mostlystatic 11y ago

I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. There used to be a question about popular programming blogs. To me it looked like a good and popular question, so I asked a similar one - which was then closed, because by then the consensus among the mods had moved on to discourage that kind of question.

mistermann 11y ago
> I think the idea is that new users will find the question and think that the type of question is still welcome on StackOverflow. Which brings us back to the original question: why isn't it welcome. Yes, I understand the very real requirement for SO to drift towards a forum, but I think they've drawn the line very far from the optimal place. Furthermore, the insane success of SO has largely killed off specialized forums where that type of very valuable conversation formerly took place. I wish SO would introduce a discussion forum site or "layer" (integrated into SO itself in some way). Jeff's motivation for SO was something along the lines of making the internet a better place - in my opinion, many of the current mod's actions are contrary to that initiative. SO is still a massive net benefit, but it could be better with a little common sense. "Update 2: Thanks to the Hacker News community, the post has now been reopened!" One would hope it would prompt some discussion and soul searching, but I expect not.

cardiffspaceman 11y ago

There is apparently a deep queue between the action of recommending that a question be closed, and when thwt recommendation is acted on. I have a question which admittedly, I put in the wrong section of the site. When I comolained about an anonymous, unexplained downvote, a helpful passerby left a comment that included useful advise, meta advice about where to post if I needed further help, and the observation that questions don't close as quickly as they should because the queue is too long.

Shog9 11y ago
This is one of my pet peeves as well; an awful lot of questions should be closed, but with a few exceptions it really doesn't do much good to close them years after the fact - that should be reserved for questions that time has proven are actually causing harm (attracting spam / misinformation / flame-wars) not everything that someone once thought was problematic but has been doing fine for many months anyway. Over the past year or so, we've altered the mechanics of close voting to encourage fast closure and discourage gradual accumulation of votes. If you're interested in the details, see: http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250223/age-close-votes-after-14-days-regardless-of-views-allowing-recasting http://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/250223/age-close-vot...

cardiffspaceman 11y ago

When they decided to sprout the "sub-stack-overflows" they decided that each sub would have a topic. There is a sub for interetation of Jewish religious law, and you wouldn't post a programming question there. But if you mostly READ stackoverflow questions (on the subject of coding) and you have a question about using PGP commandline options, you're not supposed to post it on stackoverflow just because it's the one you read most. That would be a superuser question (probably).

techdragon 11y ago
Except these stupidly small pockets of further subculture division generate less and less useful answers.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Especially if you get shunted around different sites. A question about a *nix software on an Apple device? That could be superuser, or unix, or askdifferent, or maybe the ubuntu one whatever that's called.