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What happens to questions and answers that will eventually get outdated because of future patches? Take for example if we were at the day that Warcraft 3 was released and I asked

How do you prevent Mountain King from sniping your turrets with storm bolt?

which obviously doesn't apply to the next patches since Mountain King was immediately nerfed after that, how would it get dealt with? A tag for each patch? General housekeeping? How can we reach everything so that it doesn't mislead new users into taking an answer for what it is? Questions about strategies or counters can be easily outdated with recent patches.

I'm also thinking that this might cause duplicates in the future, like for example what if a question on how to counter Marauders in Starcraft 2 comes up, the nerf comes, a new tactic emerges, and then a new question on how to counter marauders but specific to the newer patch comes up?

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2 Answers 2

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If, after the patch, an answer becomes outdated, update the answer.

If, after the patch, a question becomes no longer applicable, close the question (use a custom reason referencing the relevant patch) and delete it.

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    Guess it still stands to the principle laid out by the SO sites where the community manages itself.
    – Jonn
    Sep 2, 2010 at 11:48
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    I would suggest commenting or flagging questions that our out-dated if anyone spots one, else perhaps no action will be taken
    – Ivo Flipse
    Sep 2, 2010 at 16:56
  • Too localized does not exist any more. What should we vote now? gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/66410/… This question is outdated since there is no more follower xp. Mar 25, 2014 at 13:39
  • What exactly do we flag them as? They're not dupes. They're not offtopic. It's pretty clear what they're asking. Sure as hell ain't broad. And it's not opinion based.
    – Oak
    Feb 14, 2016 at 2:05
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Would that information some how become worthless?

Let's take an even simpler example (from Broodwars): For a long time every Protoss and their mother would run 5 gate. What do you do against 3 base Muta? 5 gate. What do you do against +1 bio? 5 gate. What response to Mech play? 5 gate. PvP? 5 GATE! There was no Protoss strategy but the 5 gate, and all others were pretenders to the throne.

Now obviously the standard play is no longer 5 gate, a quick look at the quarter finals of the OSL will show that the 5 gate is long dead, so what use does an answer about countering 5 gate have?

When 5 gate eventually fell (and it did) it was to new kind of tactics (eg. 2 base Muta) and it was the inflexibility of 5 gate to deal with these earlier strategies. When it ran into this situation what do you think Protoss did? 4 gate, 3 gate, 3 gate robo, etc. Because those strategies has larger flexibility to deal with earlier pushes.

Today these, counter 5 gate, strategies have also fallen, so does that then mean the 5 gate will come back in to play? As a new player I might realize, "Oh my god, if I can get 5 gates and just macro, I can curb stomp anybody!" To this new player, knowing what the weakness of 5 gate is, is still useful. What's more, what happens when some player does go 5 gate against you? Even though its no longer a common strategy there really is nothing to stop someone from doing this? The information about what makes a 5 gate inflexible and how to deal with it is still useful.

Now you might say, "sure that works for the meta game, but what about when MK gets his storm bolt nerfed?" Well I'm glad you asked faceless straw man. Those strategies used to counter Storm Bolt sniping, are still useful against the MK. Even though he no longer is able to easily snipe towers, he hasn't disappeared from the game. Information about him and his abilities persists. Sure certain details of the answer will go out of date, but if its a good answer, the concepts that it teaches should still be relevant.


On the other hand, if you're worried about people trolling out of date answers, we can always just lock them and keep them around.

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    It was just a mild concern as I had a few experiences in SO where an outdated piece of advice, led me on a wild goose chase. They are pretty rare, but still do exist. Games patches do roll out faster than code libraries so there may be instances where changes are a bit more frequent.
    – Jonn
    Sep 2, 2010 at 11:48
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    @John I was trying to suggest that sometimes answers retain their use. Honestly, though I think badp's answer is better than mine.
    – tzenes
    Sep 3, 2010 at 0:54
  • I chose it out of the explanation on how you explained old answers retaining relevance. I'll mark it then.
    – Jonn
    Sep 3, 2010 at 7:42

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