The influx of old questions from the Late Answers dump has renewed an old issue. Many of the questions that received these late answers have close-worthy issues, like no longer being on-topic, or long since been solved, overtaken by events, or abandoned (and too unclear to answer without clarification).

Whether to close old questions has been asked periodically. Some of the previous Meta questions on this:

• Should close votes only be applicable for 'new' questions
• What can I do with old questions that I think should be closed?
• Should a very old question asking for software recomendations be flagged?
• What should be done about old, abandoned questions?
• Should we close old questions with no more feedback as “no longer relevant”, on SuperUser?

In the past, the answer has been a pretty universal one -- close what's appropriate to close regardless of age. It leaves the existing question and answers in place, but prevents spam and low quality answer posts when the question really can't be answered other than by luck (and in most of these cases, the questioner is no longer around to provide feedback).

I've voted to close a number of these, but it doesn't seem to get any traction. I'm only guessing that people figure the old questions can just remain buried after the Late Answer cleanup is done.

At least one of the previous Meta questions mentions using the Vote To Close chat room, which no longer exists. Also mentioned is posting a list of the questions on Meta to get them some attention.

What's the current feeling on this? Should we just let these questions scurry back into hiding? Post them here?

The influx of old questions from the Late Answers dump has renewed an old issue. Many of the questions that received these late answers have close-worthy issues, like no longer being on-topic, or long since been solved, overtaken by events, or abandoned (and too unclear to answer without clarification).

Whether to close old questions has been asked periodically. Some of the previous Meta questions on this:

• Should close votes only be applicable for 'new' questions
• What can I do with old questions that I think should be closed?
• Should a very old question asking for software recomendations be flagged?
• What should be done about old, abandoned questions?
• Should we close old questions with no more feedback as “no longer relevant”, on SuperUser?

In the past, the answer has been a pretty universal one -- close what's appropriate to close regardless of age. It leaves the existing question and answers in place, but prevents spam and low quality answer posts when the question really can't be answered other than by luck (and in most of these cases, the questioner is no longer around to provide feedback).

I've voted to close a number of these, but it doesn't seem to get any traction. I'm only guessing that people figure the old questions can just remain buried after the Late Answer cleanup is done.

At least one of the previous Meta questions mentions using the Vote To Close chat room, which no longer exists. Also mentioned is posting a list of the questions on Meta to get them some attention.

What's the current feeling on this? Should we just let these questions scurry back into hiding? Post them here?