Should we bother closing old questions?

Question

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?

Answer 1

TL;DR: If I see a question on the front page that I believe is off topic according to current standards, then I vote to close that question.

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Sure, perhaps closing a question can in principle be seen as "penalizing" the author of that question. But really, there are two major possibilities here (allowing for slight variations of each):

• The asker is no longer active on the site. In this case, whether or not the question received an answer that solved the problem, the asker isn't penalized whether the question ends up closed or left open now, because they are no longer around.
• The asker is still active on the site. In this case, they are likely familiar with our current standards. They can always bring the closure up in chat, on meta, or flag their question for moderator attention to request that it is reopened if they feel it was closed in error, or fix whatever caused the question to be closed (if it is fixable without invalidating existing answers) and have it reviewed and possibly reopened through the normal reopen review queue.

On the other hand, leaving the question open:

• Indicates to people new to the community that this is a type of question that we accept, inviting further similar questions.
• Allows posting of answers that can be anything from actually useful (I find this to be the less common case) to borderline inappropriate to downright spam.

To me, certainly the fact that off-topic questions being left open indicates to newcomers that the type of question is allowed outweighs the relatively minor issue of an active user having an old question of theirs closed because it no longer meets current standards. Hence I vote to close with an appropriate reason when I see them. (However, I do not go looking for this type of question to vote to close them.)

I recall having had at least one question of my own closed as off-topic on Stack Overflow long after it was posted. I don't hold any grudges against the people who voted to close it there, nor do I feel the closure was unfair, as the question at that point was off topic on that site.

Answer 2

[close a question that is] no longer being on-topic

The Stack Exchange network's policy is clear: you are not allowed to ask off-topic questions. If a question was asked years ago and it was on topic, then don't molest it. (This assumes it's not close-able for other reasons.)

The Stack Exchange network also lacks a clear policy on what to do with questions that become off-topic over time due to changing goals or rules. Any attempts to answer that question is just bike shedding.

My personal feeling (i.e., a bikeshed moment) is leave them alone, because they were on-topic when asked. Otherwise, the community would have moved against it for being off-topic when it was asked. So don't penalize the asker because norms have changed.

A related question is How can we distinguish official policies and procedures from opinions? As far as I know, all sites in the Stack Exchange network suffer it.

Answer 3

1. If a question is off topic, then it is off topic. It matters not whether it was on topic at the time of asking. So, Yes, do vote to close.

2. Don’t go out of your way to look for problems, unless they’re the kind of problems you can fix yourself.

   • Do your best to fix any problem you see
     • on the front page,
     • in review queues,
     • in your normal browsing of the site.
   • You can go looking for other problems, such as misspelled words, duplicate questions, and suchlike, if that gives you pleasure and if you have sufficient rep to deal with such problems unilaterally, without taking up anyone else’s time.
   • If your edits or close votes need approval from other people, don’t go looking for problems, but still do your best to fix them when you come across them.

More detail.