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Over on Skeptics.SE I've been following this question, which is part of a series and links to four other related questions, as indicated in this handy table:

Table showing links to other questions

Unfortunately, three of those questions have since been roomba'd (presumably -- I don't have enough rep to see deleted posts and confirm).

Given that link rot is already a significant concern, it would seem that for links that SE manages, something could be done about this. I know that for mods and high-rep users these links aren't dead, but for everyone else they are, and work against the goal of "building a library of detailed answers" (from the tour page of every site).

To prevent this, don't roomba a question which is linked from another post.

Right now, roomba exists to clean up borderline questions, and does so at the expense of link rot. I propose that link rot is worse than having some low-scoring, unanswered questions lying around.

Note that spammy, very low quality, or link-only posts will already be addressed by the system (automatically, or as flagged by users). My proposal is essentially saying that when there's a question that isn't demonstratively bad (just not getting a lot of attention), but is linked from somewhere else, preventing link rot is enough of a reason not to delete it.

Alternative (but presumably harder) solutions:

  • Provide a visual notification that a link goes to a deleted post (perhaps gray out the link?)
  • Notify the author of the post containing the link that a post they linked to is deleted, so they have the opportunity to edit
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    Seems open to abuse. Don't want your terrible question to die? Just edit a link to it into one of your other less bad questions. You could even hide the link so it's harder for us to spot your keep-alive.
    – Robert Longson
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 15:53
  • @RobertLongson the current system is also open to abuse, since you could just self-answer. Also, the roomba isn't for terrible posts (which should be flagged), but for meh posts.
    – LShaver
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 15:55
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    Poor self-answers can be mod-deleted. Most abuse can be caught by moderators.
    – Mast
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 15:57
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    If Roomba is deleting posts that are otherwise useful/ should stick around on smaller sites, then that sounds like the issue that needs to be addressed. Eg.: Decrease the required view count to prevent Roomba deletion when score = 0 on smaller sites
    – zcoop98
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:04
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    @ The Skeptic posts that were roomba'd were written by a mod long before the release of the vaccines but no one had posted an answer and, I think, no one had upvoted them, so... not such a great loss. At the time it seemed to me that one or two could have been closed as duplicates, which might have saved them obliteration...
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 17:21
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    It's an upvote for the last suggestion. A user should be warned a week ahead that their question will be zapped unless it is improved or receives an upvote. This unpleasant surprise happened to me once, and I was not impressed by the lack of communication. Managed to save it though, not sure how... will check. BRB
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 17:26
  • Found it: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/328351/…
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 17:29
  • How does deleting work? What can cause a post to be deleted? etc. Good luck with scanning that .
    – Mari-Lou A Слава Україні
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 17:35
  • @LShaver - So is your suggestion, that a single question linking to another question, could prevent the link question from being roombad? This seems like it just creates more work for the community, making it required, to manually vote to delete a question that only contains links to other questions (this extra work is handled by the roomba script).
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 18:30
  • @Ramhound such a question (just a bunch of links) should already have been caught by something besides the roomba. Roomba is a janitor. My proposal is that we notify the janitor that we care about link-rot, so it's a good enough reason to leave something alone.
    – LShaver
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 19:08
  • @LShaver - I can't get behind that. If I want to add a link to a question in the list of linked questions, I can do so by hiding a url, that doesn't mean that question shouldn't be eligible to be deleted by the Roomba. There should be specific criteria, like x questions have linked to it, a single question would just create more work. Would this extend to comments to a question, could a comment that linked to another question, prevent that question from being deleted by the roomba?
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 19:13
  • @Ramhound I don't think this should extend to comments, which are meant to be transitory. If you're not in support that's fine, but to be clear, you're prioritizing getting rid of some borderline questions (which is why the roomba exists) at the expense of link rot. I personally feel that link rot is a worse problem than having some unanswered, low scoring questions lying around.
    – LShaver
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 19:17
  • Your proposal doesn't make that clear.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 19:20
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    Roomba shouldn't exist at all.
    – user1271772
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 19:35
  • @Ramhound I edited to include.
    – LShaver
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 20:04

1 Answer 1

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The way you mitigate link rot is to excerpt the important and relevant parts of what you’re linking to in your post, not by trying to prevent posts from being deleted. If you don’t excerpt the important parts, you would also have to lock the question to ensure it didn’t change and become irrelevant.

A post should stand on its own.

One user linking to a post does not make it worth keeping. If the post was truly valuable either the question or one of its answers would have a positive score, and thus be exempted from automated clean up. Linking to a post theoretically increases its visibility, so it is even more suspect if it is unable to attain a positive score from the community after being linked than if it had just languished with too few views.

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    In general, yes, But I'm talking about links within the SE network. All those links on the sidebar don't include the relevant parts -- should they be removed? The answer is no, because the system verifies that they aren't dead before adding them over there. So why doesn't the system do the same to other SE-internal links?
    – LShaver
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:07
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    It doesn’t matter that they are on the network. Posts that are catalogs of other posts don’t fit the SE model. Questions and answers should not be fundamentally damaged if an unloved post they link to gets deleted. There are other mechanisms to relate posts, and the roomba shouldn’t be vacuuming up posts the community finds valuable.
    – ColleenV
    Commented Jul 29, 2021 at 16:12

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