tea.mathoverflow.net - Discussion Feed (Deleting closed questions)

Andy Putman comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17538)

Andy Putman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 20:31:52 -0800

It's kind of fun to go back and browse the really bad questions.

Speaking of which, I had assumed that the following silly question would have been closed long ago, but somehow it wasn't. I provided the first close vote -- does anyone want to help me finish it off?

http://mathoverflow.net/questions/41359/is-wedderburns-theorem-finite-skew-fields-dont-exist-used-as-a-proof-techniqu

Bill Johnson comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17537)

Bill Johnson — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:49:10 -0800

Don't ignore ones that do not have any votes to close. I cast the first vote on a bunch that I thought were clear cut cases, but got worn out after a while.

Mariano comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17536)

Mariano — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:54:44 -0800

I've just killed quite a few. It is a surprisingly soothing activity! :D

Andy Putman comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17535)

Andy Putman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 14:26:56 -0800

OK, I'm procrastinating, so I went and found some more questions to delete. Here they are.

EDIT : All the ones I listed are gone, so I deleted the list.

Bill Johnson comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17534)

Bill Johnson — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:56:38 -0800

Thanks, Andy, for taking the lead in cleaning up.

Andy Putman comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17533)

Andy Putman — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 13:41:14 -0800

I just provided the third and final delete vote to a bunch of bad questions. It was a lot of fun!

By the way, on the page with "questions with delete votes", if you click "30D" at the top you get a more complete list of questions with votes to close.

Also, here seems to be a bug, and sometimes I get an error and have to try to vote to delete several times before it works. Does anyone know what went wrong?

Here are a few more that need just one more vote, in case anyone wants to provide it:

EDIT : It looks like my entire list was deleted. There's no point in leaving it here -- anyone with 10k rep can see which posts were recently deleted.

However, here are a few more:

EDIT : It looks like those one have now been taken care of too.

Bill Johnson comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17530)

Bill Johnson — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:31:00 -0800

It is the "closed" page which is relevant, Ryan. Well, pages; there are 160 (sic) of them!

Ryan Budney comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17528)

Ryan Budney — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 10:11:55 -0800

Another reason is the "delete" page is its own page in the moderation tools. I tend to only look at the "stats" page, sometimes the "close" page. Until this week I think I've only looked at the delete page once.

Mariano comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17520)

Mariano — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 05:21:05 -0800

One of the reasons that those who can don't delete much is that one can only vote to delete after a couple of days after closure. The most obvious things to be deleted are also easiest to forget about in two days.

Bill Johnson comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17516)

Bill Johnson — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 12:18:53 -0800

Thanks, Gerhard & Francois. I knew that it took 3 votes to delete, but that fact seems not to appear explicitly on the faq page or on pages that only 10K users can see--I deduced it from looking at votes for deleting closed posts.

I have reservations about drawing attention on meta to a large number of closed posts that perhaps should be considered for deletion.

François G. Dorais comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17515)

François G. Dorais — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:42:31 -0800

Bill, I'm glad you have decided to use your new moderation privileges! So far, deleting questions has mostly been done by moderators, but it's usually not highest in our priority list. We would be happy to see more high reputation users take on such maintenance tasks.

It takes 3 votes to delete a closed question and there is a 48 hour waiting period after closure before deletion votes can be cast. Since candidates for deletion lose visibility fast, it's a good idea to occasionally check the deletion list in the moderation tools. Candidates for deletion can also be brought up on meta to increase awareness and discuss borderline cases.

For spam, it is best to flag as spam. After 6 flags, the question is deleted and the poster gets a 100 point penalty. It only takes 15 points to have the ability to flag as spam and there is no 48 hour waiting period.

grp comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17514)

grp — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 10:18:53 -0800

I am glad you chose to revive this thread. I see very little information posted on orienting new high reputation users, largely because I have chosen a slow route toward gaining reputation (and so don't expect to get 10k power before 2013).

I have a couple of suggestions based in a cautious attitude toward such things. First, don't do anything that is irreversible, or at least repairable. Second, while I doubt that there is any policy about keeping "high rep" powers a secret, it may be that certain things should be discussed with a moderator before being mentioned in a public forum like meta. These suggestions are not meant as criticisms of your choosing to post.

For the matter of deleting closed questions, there are instances where people may want to point to a question and say "Don't do that." , or they may have already done so. In doing searches on MathOverflow I find very little cruft in the system, so I recommend not doing any unsolicited or independent deleting. If you feel this is being too inactive, you could post a list of question numbers that you feel should be deleted, similar to posts Anton and others have made about questions which should be undeleted. Posting such a list and getting feedback from "high reps" is as direct a way I can think of for you to get your bearings on this issue.

Gerhard "How's The Weather Up There?" Paseman, 2011.12.11

Bill Johnson comments on "Deleting closed questions" (17513)

Bill Johnson — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 09:28:10 -0800

I am pulling this back to the front page because, as a new 10K user, I feel some obligation to do my part to keep the site "clean". In perusing deleted and undeleted closed questions, I do not get much of a sense of how people decide on which closed questions to delete. Of course, spam obviously should go, but generally Anton gets rid of spam quickly. Questions that do not make sense don't belong, IMO. I believe that homework type questions and undergraduate level questions should go. Do you agree with me? What other kinds of closed questions should be deleted?

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8225)

Anton Geraschenko — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 19:56:32 -0700

To add to what François is saying: if a post gets 6 spam flags and is deleted as spam, the 100 point penalty can be removed by a moderator with a rep recalc. If a question gets 3 spam flags, it stops showing up on the home page.

If you really feel that a question should be deleted quickly, you can always flag for moderator attention. We can delete it at any time.

François G. Dorais comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8224)

François G. Dorais — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:43:30 -0700

Charles, you are correct. However, since it is very hard to reach a 6 person consensus in 48 hours, the number of spurious deletions of this type is minimal. In fact, I think the spam/offensive flags are somewhat underused by the community since almost all deletions have been due to moderator intervention in the end.

Charles Staats comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8223)

Charles Staats — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 18:31:16 -0700

Francois G. Dorais: According to a discussion elsewhere, deleting a question in this way also imposes a large reputation penalty on the poster, and thus should be used very sparingly (as in, someone trying to sell viagra).

Kaveh comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8202)

Kaveh — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 00:30:41 -0700

It would be nice if there was an option for users that when set, MO would not show all closed questions but only the recent ones.

theojf comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8198)

theojf — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:13:18 -0700

But I wonder if the computer could be coaxed to let closed questions slowly "fade away" if they have no activity.

theojf comments on "Deleting closed questions" (8197)

theojf — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 20:11:58 -0700

@Pete: I assume to prevent us from deleting questions that should be salvaged. Given that there is some concern about hasty closing, I don't mind the built-in un-hasty-ness for deletion.

François G. Dorais comments on "Deleting closed questions" (7996)

François G. Dorais — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 18:59:24 -0700

Six spam flags will also delete a question.

Pete L. Clark comments on "Deleting closed questions" (7994)

Pete L. Clark — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:22:29 -0700

I agree that the waiting period to delete already closed questions seems quite inconvenient, almost to the point of defeating the purpose of the feature. Why wait two days to do something that you want to do now?

Mariano comments on "Deleting closed questions" (7993)

Mariano — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:11:33 -0700

I've tried to (vote to) delete a couple of the spammy questions by Ross, but I can only do that after a couple of days, it seems.

Anton Geraschenko comments on "Deleting closed questions" (7992)

Anton Geraschenko — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 17:08:28 -0700

10k+ rep users can vote to delete closed questions (that have been closed for at least two days), so I thought I would get some idea of which questions you wanted to delete by looking at the delete tool (viewable by 10k+ rep users), but there aren't currently any questions with delete votes.

Mariano comments on "Deleting closed questions" (7991)

Mariano — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 16:39:01 -0700

Lots of questions get closed, yet they linger for ever. This is of little significance, except when one searches for something.

May we consider the practice of not only closing questions (I have in mind those which are not of the contentious type...) but also actually delete them?