How do you handle questions that include Ubuntu pastebin links?

Question

Ubuntu pastebin is a nice online tool for sharing formatted text between users, especially for very large log files for a short period of time, then it expires and is permanently deleted.

Stumbling upon this question while reviewing, OP included 3 pastebin links that will expire in one month from the moment created, and the link would break, thus making the question unanswerable or undocumented.

On the other hand, those log files are huge, and embedding them as part of the question's body wouldn't be a smart choice, so OP actually chose a smart way of sharing this information.

We have two question standard requirements that somewhat collide.
How do we handle such questions?

Answer 1

In my opinion you have three options:

1. If the pastebins aren't huge just embed them in the post.

2. Ask the OP to reupload the pastebins without expiration.

3. Reupload the pastebins yourself without expiration.

In the case you mention, the pastebins aren't extremely big, so they could be embedded.

Also, if you look closely, they aren't three pastebins, but only one. The OP just linked them three times in their question.

Answer 2

I agree with BeastOfCaerbannog, wholly.

The system can handle large-ish pastes and will tell you when it can't. Just remember that you don't have to indent you can use ~~~ fences before and after code and that saves you 4n characters.

But as a fourth point, if you know what you're looking at, you could edit in the just relevant error message or code fragment or whatever. Most questions don't need a 4000-line dmesg output, just a few lines. So editorialise if that makes the question clearer.

In this case, editorialising a formatted log like this might not work as well, but keep it in mind for posts that have large multi-source data splooges. We probably don't need all that to answer the question.