Question deletions are getting out of hand

There's no question that good content is being deleted more often lately. I still stand by my original judgment that Why do people think functional programming will catch on? is fundamentally the same question as Why functional languages?, but I'm willing to bend a little and allow that it's not an exact duplicate.

As has been stated elsewhere numerous times already, duplicates serve a purpose. They should certainly be closed, but in many cases they should not be deleted. Exact duplicates with answers should be merged. Near duplicates should be locked in a closed state to serve as search bait and a link to the original. Flag for moderator attention when you see questions like these that are deleted or in imminent danger of deletion.

The question is a duplicate of at least two other questions.

It should be closed based on that fact.

Should it be deleted?

No.

The question should be merged with the other duplicates so that we can at least retain the knowledge.

Use your deletion votes responsibly!

If the appropriateness of discussions on SO were as black and white as some of the answers here suggest, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.

For God's sake, if a question has valuable content, just leave it!

StackOverflow is not your site. It is everyone's site. When you vote to delete a question, you are erasing content. You are choosing for the greater community what they can see and not see.

It's good that you have contributed enough quality to the site so that you now have the power to cast delete votes. The system (and the community) now trusts you. Be worthy of that trust.

... but with that many upvotes there must be something of value in there.

Sadly, not true. Joke questions get dozens of upvotes. Poll questions get dozens of upvotes. There is an army of muppets out there. The more inappropriately subjective and argumentative, the more they vote for it. They all love discussions and arguments. Some of them post insulting comments whenever someone characterizes a question as subjective and argumentative.

If we lose a few snippets of interesting text in the overall war against crap, it's sad, but it seems to me inevitable absent better tools or different direction from the management.

In the interest of full disclosure, I personally vote to delete quite a few off-topic, subjective, or open-ended discussion or poll questions. I generally leave duplicates alone (with a few exceptions, like an author double-posting). I stand by the votes I've made, since I feel they reduce clutter and needless redundancy and increase the signal to noise ratio.

Now to the issue of overzealous deletion...

One hypothesis as to why some users may vote to delete so much is to stave off the seemingly inevitable reopening of questions that clearly should stay closed. Here is one very recent example. I provided links in one of my comments to three questions covering the same topic. I voted to close as a duplicate, but it already had too many votes to close it as subjective (admittedly, I think it could be closed for either reason).

Now, people have reopened it. Maybe they voted to reopen because they disagree that it's subjective, or maybe because they want to save it from deletion. But it seems very clear that it is covering ground that has already been covered, and should stay closed as a duplicate or merged with another question.

There are also examples of extreme inclusionists who apparently believe that nothing should ever be closed, and no matter how off-topic or subjective a question is, they will vote to reopen. Some of these individuals are constantly beating closers over the head with the mantra that people should just put subjective in their ignored tag list (in my opinion, this is an inappropriate and nonsensical "solution" because it gives tacit acceptance to things that do not belong, thus feeding the growth of noise). The fact that many questions that should stay closed don't stay closed may drive some people to vote for deletion as a way to combat it.

The above examples illustrate a vicious cycle that may be occurring. Some wrongly vote to reopen in an effort to avoid deletion, while others wrongly vote to delete to avoid reopening. In my opinion, both groups (the inclusionists and the deletionists) are being a tad too overzealous, thus setting up a potential feedback loop with an unpleasant outcome.

I think after a certain number of votes/views/answers a post should only be deletable by a diamond mod.

Is this "mob rule"? Well, having a group of elite users with elevated power to control information on SO is an elitist oligarchy. Limiting certain actions to only diamond mods - typically elected, mind you - is a little closer to democracy.

If you don't think the first one is a real duplicate, then vote to re-open it. I don't, and did.

If you think the second question is appropriate for the site, then vote to re-open it. Personally, I think it's a discussion question at best, and bordering on flame-bait. I voted to delete it.

There's a third option of course, for questions that, strictly-speaking aren't appropriate but which have managed to garner some good answers and are thus rightfully popular: ask a moderator to lock them. No more answering, no more deletion, existing value preserved.

Remember, closing has always been a "nomination for deletion". For a long, long time, deletion was relatively rare because only moderators and a tiny handful of users could do it... That is no longer the case. If you see a question closed that you don't want deleted, then do something about it, don't wait around for the delete votes to show up.

And if you're out-voted, and can't get a moderator to back you up, then suck it up and live with the community's decision.

Number of Close/Delete votes needed should be a function of number of Upvotes/Answers/Favourites.

This would keep a balance between likers and dislikers. Prevents the situation where lots of people like a question and only a few are needed to vapourise it.

I'm sure there must be a downside to this idea, I just can't figure out what it is ; )

Update: Please see comments for the downsides pointed out by others.

Update #1: After reading Jeff's comments about 'mob rule' in this post, I should mention I feel the above idea should mitigate that problem. Because if you just say 'Over 400 upvotes means no deletion' you are favouring the upvoters. But by having the number of close/delete votes be a function of upvotes/answers/favs, you keep the same balance/ratio regardless of the questions popularity. Admittedly, I'm not exactly sure how this would play out with the 'Jon Skeet Facts' type extremes, but still worth a look I think.

Update #2: See Improved Question Merging SO blog post for info on how this was addressed.

This question came up again and again and again.

I'm all for pruning, but deleting something people like is just stupid.

I find it disturbing that a very small handful of users can affect the content of the site(s) in such a significant way.

And how! In such a significantly destructive way! The very reason people come to this site is those questions that are upvoted. Deleting that content considers it rubbish and its completely backwards

I vote to delete most discussion-type questions. I don't think it's enough to leave them closed - they set a bad example, regardless of how many Eric Lippert answers they attract.

I have no interest in how many upvotes such questions receive, nor do I care who has answered them or how good the answers are. If you like them, then copy them to your blog or elsewhere.

You get two days from the time the question is closed before I can cast one of the three votes necessary to delete it. During that time, you can add comments, or vote to reopen. I have even voted to reopen questions myself if the comments state why the question should stay open or not be deleted.

Be careful what you ask for here. Do you really want "mob rule"?

In some cases, it seems that popular questions are being deleted because they are off-topic, instead of being migrated to a more appropriate site. This question had more that 150 votes when it was deleted, and it could have been saved from deletion if it had been migrated to softwarerecs.

This problem could possibly be mitigated if Stack Exchange users had an option to vote against a question's deletion, but this does not appear to be possible yet.