Return to Answer

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that Ask Ubuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Deletion Stickiness
  As you've seen, when you try to delete something of your own, you get a nice little warning saying "Don't delete things! It's bad!" I won't repeat things that have already been said, so check out this MSE answer as to why this friction exists.

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that Ask Ubuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Deletion Stickiness
  As you've seen, when you try to delete something of your own, you get a nice little warning saying "Don't delete things! It's bad!" I won't repeat things that have already been said, so check out this MSE answer as to why this friction exists.

Yes, AskUbuntu is meant to be an archive of information for future users (with some rules).

AskUbuntu's entire premise is to create a (relatively) permanent collection of answers to any and all questions about Ubuntu, in a manner where new users are helped the most. This means that (almost) every (good) answer is saved in order to help people tomorrow, a year from now, and even potentially a decade from now.

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that AskUbuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Deletion Stickiness
  As you've seen, when you try to delete something of your own, you get a nice little warning saying "Don't delete things! It's bad!" I won't repeat things that have already been said, so check out this MSE answer as to why this friction exists.

While AskUbuntu doesn't act like an archive on a day-to-day basis, a lot of what you do now is still logged and preserved for the future to see. AskUbuntu (and all of StackExchange) were designed around the "archive" mentality, even though it doesn't appear to be immediately obvious. In tech, problems tend to repeat themselves. People have the same questions time and time again. So, the archive allows us to point people to a question, and hopefully get an answer, no matter where we are in time.

Yes, Ask Ubuntu is meant to be an archive of information for future users (with some rules).

Ask Ubuntu's entire premise is to create a (relatively) permanent collection of answers to any and all questions about Ubuntu, in a manner where new users are helped the most. This means that (almost) every (good) answer is saved in order to help people tomorrow, a year from now, and even potentially a decade from now.

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that Ask Ubuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Deletion Stickiness
  As you've seen, when you try to delete something of your own, you get a nice little warning saying "Don't delete things! It's bad!" I won't repeat things that have already been said, so check out this MSE answer as to why this friction exists.

While Ask Ubuntu doesn't act like an archive on a day-to-day basis, a lot of what you do now is still logged and preserved for the future to see. Ask Ubuntu (and all of Stack Exchange) were designed around the "archive" mentality, even though it doesn't appear to be immediately obvious. In tech, problems tend to repeat themselves. People have the same questions time and time again. So, the archive allows us to point people to a question, and hopefully get an answer, no matter where we are in time.

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that AskUbuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Duplicate Questions
  If your question is a duplicate of another (with good answers), your question is closed as a duplicate and will act as a "signpost" to that question, making it easier for others to find answers in the future.

• Link-Only Answers
  This is why this site hates Link-Only answers so much. If the link goes down, the answer is useless, and as such can not participate in the archive. We can trust (somewhat) that AskUbuntu can stay online, not so much some random forum or blog.

• Non-Forum Structure
  If we're looking to store answers, things in the forum structure can be annoying. Who wants to sort through 18 pages of posts saying "me too" or throwing in some (possibly) useless advice or complete off-topic tangents? Hence, we create a system where there are only answers, in order to facilitate organizing and making sure the archive works.

• Accepted Answers
  When an answer is marked as accepted, it's a flag to the world (and the future) that says "Hey, this worked for me! It may very well work for you too!" Again, it's helping to improve the quality of the archive and make sure that people in the future can find known-verified solutions to problems. To some extent, upvotes do the same thing. You can probably trust a question with a score of 80 to be pretty accurate and be a good answer that can potentially stand the test of time.

• Non-Permanent Deletion
  Very few things on this site are permanently deleted. In fact, once you hit 10,000 reputation, you see (almost) every deleted post on this site. Again, even deleted things are archived because who knows? They might have some use in the future.

• Deletion Stickiness
  As you've seen, when you try to delete something of your own, you get a nice little warning saying "Don't delete things! It's bad!" I won't repeat things that have already been said, so check out this MSE answer as to why this friction exists.