On Code Golf Stack Exchange there was recently a flood of code-trolling questions, which were mostly awful. While they brought lots of traffic to the website, they were also awful questions (which were off-topic and too broad). Most of the "follow the leader" code-trolling questions were simply deleted, but some (the better ones, like http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/16226/3103 that began it all) were locked with a note that "This question exists because it has historical significance". But I digress.

The common thing about the linked topics are they are popular, upvoted a lot big lists. It's exactly like code-trolling on codegolf.se. My personal proposal is not to delete those topics (I believe they contain some useful information, even if they are off topic). However, instead I'm going to suggest locking those topics (only moderator can do it, but I doubt this is any issue), which protects the question from being deleted by someone who isn't a moderator.

On Code Golf Stack Exchange there was recently a flood of code-trolling questions, which were mostly awful. While they brought lots of traffic to the website, they were also awful questions (which were off-topic and too broad). Most of the "follow the leader" code-trolling questions were simply deleted, but some (the better ones, like https://codegolf.stackexchange.com/q/16226/3103 that began it all) were locked with a note that "This question exists because it has historical significance". But I digress.

The common thing about the linked topics are they are popular, upvoted a lot big lists. It's exactly like code-trolling on codegolf.se. My personal proposal is not to delete those topics (I believe they contain some useful information, even if they are off topic). However, instead I'm going to suggest locking those topics (only moderator can do it, but I doubt this is any issue), which protects the question from being deleted by someone who isn't a moderator.