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I've been pondering this for the last couple of days. I was researching ways to verifiy ripped audio files and found this question which I found very useful. I thought it was a good sensible question. However, I edited it to add a useful tag and it would appear that my activity raised the question's visibility which led to it being put on hold even though it wasn't on hold for the six years since it was asked.

It was the fact that someone had replied with an answer that turned out to be exactly what I wanted. So I personally was very happy that someone had asked this exact question and also that someone had taken the time to provide a useful answer and I think it is a shame for it to be marked down.

It seems a bit off to demote a useful question that has been alive and well on the site for six years, just because a tag was added. The subject matter has quite a narrow focus and, I feel, adds valuable information to the knowledge base. I was glad to find it.

What is the problem with this queston? Is it simply because the OP asked "is there a tool I could use to verify my rips in this way?"

Would it not be better to just remove that offending sentence?

If not, and this kind of question does not belong on this site, then which SE site would have been a better home for this question and should the question be migrated to that site ?

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    There are lots of questions that are off-topic, at least as written, that weren't previously closed. Early in the site's history, there was less rigorous community moderation, and a lot of stuff slipped through. As long as it's quietly buried on the site, it isn't worth the massive effort that would be needed to ferret it all out. However, it gets attention if it gets bumped to the main page through an edit or answer.
    – fixer1234
    Commented Jul 7, 2017 at 23:11
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    Btw in general it's not a problem that it's on hold. It doesn't make it more difficult to find, or make it go away, or anything like that. The biggest effect is it just prevents new answers, which is usually the right thing to do anyways. So, there really isn't much issue with things like this.
    – Jason C
    Commented Jul 19, 2017 at 17:18

2 Answers 2

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What is the problem with this question? Is it simply because the OP asked "is there a tool I could use to verify my rips in this way?"

Yes. Questions seeking product, service, or learning material recommendations are off-topic.

Would it not be better to just remove that offending sentence?

The question could be reworded, but generally we don't do that for such old questions.

In this particular case the question has upvotes and an accepted answer, so it will never be automatically deleted by the cleanup script.

Notes:

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    So if I edited it to remove that sentence, would that be enough to take it off hold?
    – starfry
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 10:14
  • @starfry It would, but like I said we don't usually bother with such old questions.
    – DavidPostill Mod
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 10:15
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    ok, I've done that. I'll leave it at that. Thanks for your answer.
    – starfry
    Commented Jul 6, 2017 at 10:19
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    @starfry I voted to reopen the question after your second edit. The edited question automatically appeared in the reopen queue and I didn't care whether it was old or new, nor what its history was (I haven't seen this meta question until now). I don't know other voters' motivations but if you ask me, the question was reopened because your edit made it on-topic, not because you convinced us here it should be reopened. I think it's good; this is the way it should be. I'm writing this to give feedback on how the site works.
    – Kamil Maciorowski
    Commented Jul 11, 2017 at 7:23
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    Thanks for the feedback @KamilMaciorowski. That's what I wanted - to make it "on topic" because I felt it was a genuinely useful and worthwhile question.
    – starfry
    Commented Jul 11, 2017 at 8:09
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Just to add to David's post, we do have a recommended way to ask questions and answer question that may involve the suggestion of a software solution:

Even though we have Software Rec, I would caution simply migrating questions like this, even if it's new. Often time a software solution is the best answer for problems that arise for Super Users.

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