Is the automatic deletion of "abandoned" questions a good thing?

Question

When reviewing my profile, I noticed I have around 30 seemingly on-topic questions with a neutral score that had been deleted by the Community user. Reviewing the deleted questions FAQ, I realized these questions had been deleted because they were 365 days old with 0 votes, 0 answers, and low traffic.

Looking at my own posts, many of these deleted questions seem to be about older or more obscure games. (Ex: Lifeline 2, Alien Crush Returns, Vignettes, NBA Street). I added undelete votes to a few of these questions in hopes of getting them reviewed, but it seems nobody else has voted on them.

As someone who enjoys seeking out overlooked questions, I wonder how many perfectly valid questions have been marked "abandoned" and deleted. One of my favorite aspects of this site is how questions can be asked about any game, no matter how obscure, and potentially get answered years later.

As traffic on Arqade declines, is the automatic deletion of 0 score, 0 answer questions a good thing for the site?

Answer 1

It probably isn't the most ideal system, but its been that way for a long time, and I don't think we can change that for our site alone.

While there is a community process in place to undelete posts, as you alluded to, with less traffic to the site and also because you need 20,000 reputation to participate in undeleting posts, you seldom will get enough undelete votes - if ever (there are only 70 users on all of Arqade with that much reputation)...

I'll also say its made more difficult by the fact that there isn't an "undelete review queue", its all through the "moderator tools" only (the tools you unlock at 10,000 reputation), which if I am honest, even I barely look at, and I suspect the same from the other active users above 20,000 reputation (there aren't many really now-a-days).

What else can you do?

If you look at the Deleted Question FAQ that you linked to, there is a Meta SE post that goes into discussion of it, and the second most voted answer simply states the obvious - re-ask! In probably most cases on this site, this is probably the best course of action. The other and accepted answer to that post says:

If your question was deleted as abandoned, then not only was it unanswered but it also wasn't upvoted. Maybe that's because it's a super-obscure topic and few people even read it -- or maybe it means there is room for improvement in the question. The best course of action, then, is to edit to improve it and then request undeletion from users with the undelete privilege. On the sites I frequent, this is usually done via a request on meta.

At least in the examples you linked to, I don't think an edit is needed in anyway. So that leads to the next point - if you really feel it should be undeleted, you can request so via a Meta post as well (using the undelete-request tag). I see nothing wrong with that. But keep in mind, it's entirely possible it can be automatically deleted once again (like a question I asked once was).

Answer 2

No.

The automatic deletion of "abandoned" questions is generally not a good thing for Arqade. I think the current criteria for Community bot (Roomba) deletion, especially the view count criterion, are too strict and should be adjusted or removed entirely for smaller sites like Arqade.

There is a relevant, highly upvoted feature request on Meta Stack Exchange that proposes to decrease the required view count to prevent Roomba deletion when score = 0 on smaller sites. This request argues that the current threshold of “view count <= the age of the question in days times 1.5” is based on Stack Overflow’s traffic and voting patterns, which are not representative of smaller sites like Arqade.

I think this is a reasonable suggestion, as it would allow more questions about older or obscure games to stay on the site and potentially get answers in the future. Arqade is a site that welcomes questions about any game, no matter how niche or obscure, and I think that is one of its strengths. Deleting questions that have not received the required amount of views or answers in a year seems counterproductive and discouraging for both askers and answerers.

The view count threshold for auto-deletion should be lowered or removed.

I have also voted to undelete the questions you linked, but I’m afraid they will be deleted again by the community bot unless they get some upvotes or answers. I hope we can save these questions from being deleted.

Answer 3

Questions in danger of getting auto-deleted can be saved via a single upvote or comment. You can search for questions that may be deleted with the query score:0 is:q answers:0 closed:no locked:no created:1y.. (Modified from Robotnik's comment)

You can optionally remove the created:1y.. if you only want questions older than a year that may not have been deleted due to view count or comments.