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I asked this question: How can I drag and drop files into the Ubuntu One bookmark in Nautilus? It turned out that the reason why it wasn't possible was a bug in Nautilus which has been solved following today's update.

The question could possibly be seen as a bug report but the way it was asked has provided a useful answer with possible workarounds. Essentially now though the answer is "You can just drag and drop, it works". I was just wondering what the preferred way of dealing with this question is now, should I:

  1. Delete the question
  2. Add a new answer linking to the bug report and saying that the behaviour works as expected now.
  3. Just leave a comment on the answer
  4. Edit the current answer to include information that the bug is solved, but leave the original, useful, workarounds.

Or something else?

2 Answers 2

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Even after the bug fix is released, the question may be useful to someone who has not applied the fix (so they know they should apply the fix). It may also be useful to someone who experienced the problem in the past and assumed there was no solution. Furthermore, the workarounds people have posted may also be useful again for people who are (1) running the software from a live CD that was mastered before the update was released or otherwise doesn't incorporate the update, or (2) experiencing a later, similar bug.

Therefore, I think the best thing to do for the community is to post an answer explaining that this is due to such-and-such bug and that the bug was fixed and explaining briefly how to update to get the fix. Assuming you promptly (i.e., shortly after two days time) accept this answer to your question, I think having that clearly answered question more than makes up, in value to the community, for the clutter the question introduces. Furthermore, with this as the accepted answer, people will not be fooled into thinking that any outdated information is still applicable.

Clearly, once the fix is released, updating will be the best solution, so there's nothing wrong with accepting your answer even in the face of others that offered worthy workarounds. Those other answers may deserve upvotes; but yours, explaining how to get rid of the problem entirely, should be the accepted answer.

I think it's acceptable, though less ideal, to simply delete the whole question. However, I feel that you should be very reluctant to do this, unless you know that all the workarounds posted are readily accessible somewhere else that's likely to stay online. In particular, if all the workarounds are also posted as comments on the Launchpad bug page, then I think it may make sense to decide your question has come to be of minimal value to the community. (I do not think you should post the workarounds on Launchpad, so that you can feel better about then deleting your question.)

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The fix is in -proposed so it hasn't been rolled out to users yet. I would leave an answer saying the bug is fixed and will be shipped out over the next 2 weeks or so.

Then after that I would just remove the entire thing, no reason to clog the internet with out of date information.

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    I do not agree with you that the internet would be clogged with out of date information. One reason to keep the post is that someone might still be running outdated software and this post might be very helpful to them. People can decide on their own if the post is outdated by looking at the question date.
    – user53817
    Jun 29, 2012 at 22:40
  • When should you consider the information to be out of date? Is this when the bug fix is rolled out in latest release or in all releases that are still supported i.e. not EOL? Apr 10, 2013 at 13:16
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    I read the answer or question and determine, is this still an issue as of today, and then edit accordingly. Apr 10, 2013 at 14:05

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