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Meta posts are frequently used by moderators / staff to make announcements. Sometimes these announcements are not so popular (have negative scores) and don't receive any answers either causing roomba to delete them. This has happened multiple times recently: 1, 2, 3.

Given that we probably want these announcements to stay, roomba should ignore posts tagged . To prevent this from being abused the tag should potentially be made moderator-only.

Credits to Cody Gray for the idea.

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  • I wonder if locking them would prevent the deletion. Community bot has mod privileges, so I'm really not sure.
    – Laurel
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:42
  • 5
    @Laurel: Locks would prevent the Roomba from firing off, yes, but it'd be more problematic than that. What good does it to do Meta to have a locked announcement?
    – Makoto
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:44
  • 1
    @Makoto history is most certainly useful, even if the announcement is unpopular. What would be problematic is the fact that noone can interact with it then.
    – Kevin B
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:47
  • @KevinB: So...we should encourage less commentating on announcements and more answering then? Because again, in this very, very edge-case scenario, all someone needs to do is answer an announcement to ensure it's never deleted.
    – Makoto
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:53
  • @Makoto in general i think feedback should be encouraged to be presented as an answer, absolutely, but i still think announcements posted as questions that fail to do so shouldn't be deleted.
    – Kevin B
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:58
  • 7
    But, neither of your examples currently have the announcement tag. If we're using tags, maybe it would be better to have an explicit tag, perhaps something like status-no-roomba-deletion, or a less verbose name. Probably better would just be a new lock type like a "no deletion lock".
    – Makyen Mod
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 20:19
  • @Makyen well the idea is that mods / staff then remember to add that tag. I do like the idea of a new lock type though. Maybe you should post that as an answer.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 20:23
  • Couldn't mods just... offer some trivial self-answer to the question to defeat the Roomba?
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 21, 2023 at 13:26
  • @KarlKnechtel that's what has been done in the examples shown, but that happens after the deletion has already happened, it also assumes that someone is going to notice the deletion of these posts.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented Mar 21, 2023 at 13:29
  • 1
    I mean, now that the problem has been identified, such answers could be posted preemptively.
    – Karl Knechtel
    Commented Mar 21, 2023 at 13:30
  • 4
    @KarlKnechtel That would mean moderators would need to keep track of every such post and add an answer on the last day (Probably won't want to add the answer too early in case someone else answers). This could be semi-automated with something keeping track of these. But then, it might as well be built into the system.
    – Abdul Aziz Barkat
    Commented Mar 21, 2023 at 13:34

1 Answer 1

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-15

I feel very conflicted about this idea.

On the one hand, announcements are in a separate league of their own; with the Stack Exchange platform having to do some extra stretches and bends to get discussions that aren't exactly Q&A to work, it makes some sense that these questions would be treated slightly differently.

On the other hand...this kind of occurrence only really happens when people don't think the announcement or discussion of the announcement are particularly good, or it doesn't survive the surprisingly low barrier it needs to avoid the Roomba in the first place.

So I have to wonder, is this hand wringing over a circumstance which tends to not be an issue? What of the staff making these announcements; knowing the limitations of the system, what are they doing to ensure that their announcement-style questions aren't removed by the system?

(Maybe they do belong on a blog post if they're being pruned by the very system they're meant to be supporting??)

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  • 1
    I mean, it's certainly fair to look at this as evidence that the posts staff are making here under announcements aren't adequately engaging the audience here such that more than 23 people felt it worthy of a vote and a bunch of comments but not an answers, but i think that's somewhat of a different discussion from whether or not unpopular announcement posts that didn't engage the community enough to warrant an answer should be deleted
    – Kevin B
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:17
  • 1
    Well, I'd rather have an announcement here, which I then can ignore, instead of having a blog post and an announcement mentioning that blog post or a banner mentioning. That they post on their blog and hope that it will reach many users without going to meta seems rather unlikely, imo.
    – Tom
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:19
  • 1
    @KevinB: I disagree. Both posts have a decent amount of comments underneath them which would've made suitable answers in the spirit of the meta discussion being had about these announcements. Some nudging to get people to answer instead of comment would have helped us avoid this entire plot. Furthermore, if the intention is to post it on this platform and have it adhere to the same rules of said platform, then it is not unreasonable to expect the question to engage the community in ways more than just voting.
    – Makoto
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:20
  • 2
    @Tom: I don't exactly see the difference. The blog post gives the illusion of being informed. The Meta post gives the illusion of being heard. The pattern I've seen over the last few announcements is that a decision has been made and we're being looped in for awareness rather than being asked if it were good or bad. I mean, that right there is more indication that you'd get people answering, and if we're not getting that, then it's not the Roomba who's to blame, I say.
    – Makoto
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:21
  • @Makoto We have quite similar opinions here. The best solution, in my point of view, would be they post only on their blog, but I don't see this happening in the near future. The part where our opinions differ is on "deleting". Even when an announcement wasn't well received and didn't get any answers, it is still something one might need to remember/find later, especially when it is regarding rules on Stack Overflow (or Stack Exchange). It is rare that rule changes don't get any answers, yes, but if that's the case then they shouldn't be hidden from a large portion of users.
    – Tom
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:30
  • 3
    @Tom: Again, the threshold is literally someone answering the question. That's all that's needed to prevent the question from being Roomba'd on Meta. If the announcement isn't capable of generating enough interest for people to answer it, or the staff isn't engaged enough to answer it themselves if only for the sake of preventing it from being Roomba'd, I don't see deletion as the worst fate for those announcements. I may drum up a query later on to see just how many times this has occurred but I really don't feel that based on this alone, that we shouldn't delete "dead" announcements
    – Makoto
    Commented Mar 20, 2023 at 19:44

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