up vote 11 down vote favorite

Something I was wondering about when coming across older win 7 RC and beta questions - In many cases bugs are specific to dev versions, or involve the newness of them. With the win8-dev-preview release. We're getting questions on it. There's no issue on its own, but having them have their own tag means we can merge the tags in future, or use them to prune out unanswered or obsolete questions.

Course, I don't want to go around doing it all willy nilly, so I wanted to ask if it was a good idea, or redundant.

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2 Answers

up vote 7 down vote accepted

I'm not in favour of a + / - something like might be acceptable since we can always obliterate that later.

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which is what i meant >_>. Do we rename the current tag, or manually fix the current 8 or so questions up? – Journeyman Geek Sep 14 '11 at 10:02
@JourneymanGeek If the count is low, we can go about manually editing the tags. If it's high, do a mass-retag & setup a synonym till windows 8 goes RTM/public – Sathya♦ Sep 14 '11 at 10:13
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up vote 11 down vote

This is important because once the OS is released, I support deleting all the beta and rc questions, or at least most of them AFTER THE OPERATING SYSTEM IS FULLY RELEASED.

Nothing's worse than finding a bunch of old, obsolete info on the web not about an old version of something (this is understandable), but a temporary version that never really existed at all! ick.

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While important to tag as beta/RC, we probably shouldn't punish good (but early) questions by deleting. – Daniel Beck Sep 14 '11 at 10:09
no, no.. for later deletion. Not now – Jeff Atwood♦ Sep 14 '11 at 10:15
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I know. Still. Especially if they're applicable for the final release. The tag will warn users that it might not be relevant for the final release. Do you want to delete all the Chrome questions that refer to the alpha channel (or whatever it's called) releases all the time? – Daniel Beck Sep 14 '11 at 10:22
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pretty much, yeah, I do. Chrome has infinite versioning though so it's not the same as a FREAKING OPERATING SYSTEM in this regard.. which should have some very strict versioning. Can you imagine if OSes released new versions monthly like Chrome? – Jeff Atwood♦ Sep 14 '11 at 10:28
We could instead simply close as no longer relevant or applicable ("too localized")? Deleting still seems too harsh. – Daniel Beck Sep 14 '11 at 10:30
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Too harsh? Having the internet filled with incorrect and irrelevant information about a beta or RC operating system that has long since ceased to exist.. that is harsh. Write once, read millions. – Jeff Atwood♦ Sep 14 '11 at 10:36
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It will be tagged rc and/or closed as no longer relevant. Some of those questions will continue to be relevant for the final release. Just don't delete everything with a certain tag, but on a case-by-case basis. By the way, how do you handle this on SO with beta releases of tools or frameworks? – Daniel Beck Sep 14 '11 at 10:51
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No, I agree with Jeff - once they're no longer applicable, those questions should be deleted. Removed. Burninated. Whatever tagging we decide on, we should go through that tag once the RTM is released, and remove anything that doesn't apply to the final version. If it does apply to the final version, we should update it to remove all references to pre-release versions. – nhinkle♦ Sep 14 '11 at 14:57
@nhinkle: There's a difference between deleting all the beta and rc questions and deleting those that are no longer applicable. The former requires no effort and will remove actually useful stuff, while the latter requires a ton of effort and preserves stuff that continues to be useful. – Daniel Beck Sep 15 '11 at 5:32
@DanielBeck I think you misunderstand what I'm saying... I agree with you. They should not be deleted without prejudice, they should be selectively deleted if they're no longer relevant. Editing to update for the final release... that's a toss-up. I can think of some people who'd probably be happy to volunteer though. – nhinkle♦ Sep 15 '11 at 9:31
@nhinkle AFAIU, Jeff wants to delete pretty much everything. You write that you agree. Of course we should delete questions that are no longer useful for the final release. But it will be quite a bit of work to find those. – Daniel Beck Sep 15 '11 at 9:58
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OK, I guess I misunderstood as well. I don't fully agree with Jeff. I think we should selectively delete, not delete all of them. There. – nhinkle♦ Sep 15 '11 at 10:20
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