Timeline for Turbocharging the Roomba: solutions for premature deletion
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Mar 27, 2013 at 17:30 | comment | added | Manishearth | @Shog9: Hmm, true :s | |
| Mar 27, 2013 at 17:27 | comment | added | Shog9 | Even that one hasn't been edited in over a week; somehow, I don't think hiding it is going to increase the chances of it being fixed up. | |
| Mar 27, 2013 at 17:24 | comment | added | Manishearth |
@Shog9: this is the first example I see on Phys (I'm not entirely familiar with the borders on good question/bad question on SO). It could be edited to remove it's agenda-pushingness and ask "what evidence do we have that the planck length [...]". I get what you mean, though :) I don't see how this is trivial if the question is made to disappear from only 3-4 lists (search, main page lists, Google noindex), but you know more than me about this.
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| Mar 27, 2013 at 15:30 | comment | added | Shog9 | @Manishearth: please have a look through the results of the queries I posted, and see how many (or better yet, identify the defining characteristics of) the ones that you feel are worth keeping around in any form. What you're describing entails a non-trivial amount of effort; I'm not saying it's not worth implementing, but... It needs justification. "Deletion is scary" doesn't really provide that; most of these are really just noise, and we already have a perfectly good state (soft deletion) with which to remove clutter from the normal UI. | |
| Mar 27, 2013 at 7:17 | comment | added | Manishearth | Basically: Take a look at this from the point of view of before we had a "delete closed questions policy". Doesn't this sound like a saner option? Deletion is scary, and IMO unnecessary. | |
| Mar 27, 2013 at 7:16 | comment | added | Manishearth | Deletion causes a lot of whining as well. Finally, deletion is an active job -- someone has to do it (this is nullified by the roomba proposal though). I agree that there are only a few problematic deletions out of the vast majority of normal ones. However, if we can have a system (which I still feel is not too tough to make -- ne needn't hide old, closed questions from all q lists, only search, and the various lists on the main page) with very few deletions and still solves the broken windows problem, then why should we let those few problematic deletions be there anyway? | |
| Mar 27, 2013 at 7:15 | comment | added | Manishearth | @Shog9: My point was that Nicol's suggestion is more or less the same as mine, so I don't see how it makes more "sense". Regarding what I'm trying to accomplish: I'm just saying that deletion is rather unnecessary. It stops improvements from a large section of the community. It leaves loose ends/broken links on MSO and elsewhere (and we hate broken links, that's why we disallow link-only answers). There have been many times when a post is brought up on meta for discussion, and I can't see it since I don't have the rep. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 21:18 | comment | added | Shog9 | Yeah, but again: how many of these questions shouldn't just be deleted? You can already filter out closed questions from search results if you need to; I don't know that delisting them by default is a great idea - particularly if we're cleaning up the worst of them reasonably quickly. Re-reading your answer here, I'm still not really clear on what you're trying to accomplish - if it's hiding questions that are just noise, well... We should just delete them. If it's hiding questions that have some value but aren't generally acceptable for some reason, then: when/where are they acceptable? | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 19:57 | comment | added | Manishearth | @shog ... My suggestion is also to hide closed questions from certain areas of the site. The only difference is that I'm talking of 7d old posts, he's talking about all closed post; I'm talking about hiding it from search and certain question lists, he's only talking about the main page. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 19:19 | comment | added | Shog9 | I think Nicol's suggestion to hide closed posts in some of these scenarios would make more sense and cause considerably less confusion. As soon as there's another status, there needs to be some sort of indicator for it, and then we need to decide whether or not they make sense to show in related lists, auto-tweeted posts, feeds/newsletters/multicollider/anythingAPI, data dumps, 10k tools, review... I mean, think about it: most of the site is either displaying questions, or displaying links to questions. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 19:05 | comment | added | Manishearth | @shog fair enough. I can't come up with anything more than: question lists, seaech, user page, tag page, but that's just me :s | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 18:55 | comment | added | Shog9 | @Manis: I'm not necessarily the best equipped to comment on this, but... From what I've seen, there are a ton of places in the code where the delete flag is checked in order to determine what to display and what not to. You're talking about adding another check to most/all of them. For, again, the tiny, tiny fraction of deleted posts that anyone actually cares about. Auto-deletion is reasonably simple - the functionality already exists and already accounts for the bulk of deleted questions; there's effectively no special handling for auto-deleted vs. mod-deleted. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 18:30 | comment | added | Manishearth | Basically, this eliminates the need for our current soft deletion system for closed questions (course, blatant crap can be deleted), and replaces it with a passive system that won't bother anyone andneeds no supervision. In my eyes, that's an improvement :/ | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 18:25 | comment | added | Manishearth | Deleting closed questions causes problems. In the case of manual deletions, it takes up time, and may lead to hasty deletes. In case of the roomba, we still have a loose ends problem. Also, as Nicol says, "I have a general aversion to any automatic deletion of content". This proposal solves the broken windows problem, and elimimates the need for deletion of closed questions, and any problems that come with it, by replacing an active system with a passive one. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 18:24 | comment | added | Manishearth | @shog true, which is why i'm unsure of this. However, to me it doesn't seem to be a major change -- it's just as major a change as the roomba. All that needs to be done is tweak the search and add noindex links to headers. There will not be any "softer deleted" state in the database(unlike the roomba which will flip the deleted column on for every post). | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 16:37 | comment | added | Shog9 | You're basically describing two forms of deletion, Manishearth - "soft deletion" and "softer deletion". For the vast, vast majority of deleted questions, there's zero value in making them searchable; this would essentially be an archive for those rare exceptions - which is a pretty major change to the system for a tiny, tiny minority of questions. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 11:59 | comment | added | Manishearth | The broken windows thing says "don't leave bad stuff out in the open". We're not. The silent treatment is equivalent to deletion in terms of keeping content hidden. Your argument about rotting in the back yard can be applied to deletion as well (nothing is ever truly deleted). Just that the back yard has higher walls in this case. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 11:59 | comment | added | Manishearth | @Caleb: All of them. Other users may try to improve them. There's no "rot" going on here. The other day I needed to see a bunch of closed-then-deleted questions on EE as part of a meta discussion. There is a discussion on a specific question on MSO every day, and more often than not the question is deleted. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 11:53 | comment | added | Caleb | Just because you hide your broken windows in the back yard instead of the front doesn't change the fact that they are still lying around. What sort of questions are better off for being left to rot in the weeds rather than being taken to the dump or restored into presentability? | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 11:22 | history | edited | Manishearth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 70 characters in body
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| Mar 26, 2013 at 10:34 | comment | added | Manishearth | To be clear, I'm not saying that the delete button should be removed. Deletion should still be an option. However, the silent treatment seems like a saner option to me. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 10:29 | comment | added | Manishearth |
@Caleb: The pages can always be noindex ed. It's just a closed question. Whats wrong with letting others dig them up if they have to?
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| Mar 26, 2013 at 10:26 | comment | added | Caleb | Deletion already is the silent treatment with a high rep bar for getting back to them. I think that serves more purpose than sweeping them under the rug. I don't think we really want people being able to dig them up even on Google. If there is good content, then the work should be put in to get them open. | |
| Mar 26, 2013 at 7:38 | history | answered | Manishearth | CC BY-SA 3.0 |