So far, most of the questions, even the answered ones, have been closed (I originally voted to close only unanswered ones). There are about 40 questions remaining with this tag (and I have found many more questions tagged ubuntu-one that are similarly obsolete and begun closing the unanswered ones). jokerdino suggested we might consider deleting these questions and this provoked some thoughtful discussion:
What would happen to the rewards (points, badges) people earned with those questions and answers? Would they be preserved or reverted as well when old posts are deleted?
I believe the answer to this is that if a post has 3 or more upvotes and has been on the site for at least 60 days, then reputation is not lost when it is deleted. Otherwise, reputation is lost. Someone else said:
I agree with deleting provided the rewards stay.
This could lead to the conclusion that we should delete questions where either:
- nobody got any upvotes
- everyone got more than 3 upvotes
- anyone who got upvotes has vanished from the site
However, others thought that we should not delete questions because they have some value even though they are not directly useful for the intended purpose:
As a general remark (not just for Ubuntu One), the issues people were having with a piece of software are valuable data that is worth keeping.
and
I agree these questions are no longer useful. However, there is some value in archiving posts that used to be useful, so perhaps we should not delete all questions about Ubuntu One. I am unsure what criteria to use for deciding what questions not to delete though.
Trying to take these objections as seriously as possible, I considered what value these posts could have (both because I need to have a reason for my actions and because I want to consider what in general should happen to questions that are obsolete) and I can see:
- A social history value (any historians reading care to comment?)
- A value to developers (do devs agree with this?)
My opinion based on this is that we should delete those questions that are low quality or very similar to better questions, and preserve the ones that best represent the issues people had with the software. Here are some questions I'd consider worth preserving:
Maybe there are a few others that could be useful to devs/future historians.
Further arguments in favour of preservation were:
Also these questions do not hurt our site; they can simply stay dormant.
I would argue that these questions are potentially useless results in search - the site would be more useful for its intended purpose without them
Third, the community might decide to relaunch Ubuntu One at one point.
If that happens, some of the high quality questions about the working of the service could possibly be useful. However, most of these old questions would probably be more confusing than useful, since presumably any old bugs would have been squashed and other things would have changed. If people had issues with the service, they could ask new questions about them.
Finally, why should we invest our efforts in cleaning questions which are answered but just no longer relevant?
To this I say, if it makes the site more useful, I am willing to invest my efforts and I know others will help, that is not a problem.
TL:DR
I think we should delete (at least) the questions that
- are similar to better questions
- are unclear or otherwise low quality
- won't cause reputation to be lost by active users if they are deleted
Please comment if you have an opinion on this!
