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The tag, which inspired this question is .

This game was discontinued in October 2014. Nobody has been able to play it for nearly four years and any open questions will likely never be answered as nobody has expertise in the game anymore. Even if a question is answerable, the knowledge doesn't help anybody, as the game cannot be played anymore.

Yet, the open questions for this tag consistently get pushed to the frontpage by community (most recently: this one), where they only serve to confuse and annoy users. I notice a tiny death star question on the frontpage frequently, this month alone community bumped six of them.

Is it possible to set this tag to inactive or do something else to it, so community no longer bumps the open questions to the frontpage? This would also be applicable to other online only games, which can no longer be played.

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    Maybe we can use "historical lock" (or just delete the questions...) to make this stop happening? Interested to hear others' thoughts.
    – Invader Skoodge
    Commented Jun 26, 2018 at 13:49
  • Very interested in just general cleaning of tags, not sure how SE handles unused or outdated tags.
    – FoxMcCloud
    Commented Jun 26, 2018 at 16:15
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    Sigh. This is why I wish we had more description options for historic lock then "not a good fit for SE but still useful." Having ones for "this functionality is only relevant for old versions" or "this game is no longer playable" Would go a long way...
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Jun 26, 2018 at 23:01
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    Stats wise there's 16 unanswered questions, a couple of which have answers that aren't upvoted. Also note that those that have previously downloaded the game on Google Play can still access the game
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Jun 26, 2018 at 23:04

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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No, Stack Exchange does not allow this

There isn't a way to make a tag inactive because it is old. There is a historical lock that can be applied to questions, but it is for older content that was popular, yet doesn't fit with current site guidelines.

A historical lock preserves content that was very popular when it was originally posted, but is now off-topic or otherwise out of scope for the site it is posted on. Historically locking a post ends the debate over whether a question should be kept on the site or deleted, and is often the final state of a question that has been deleted and undeleted more than once.

A game that is discontinued doesn't really fall into this criteria because it is still on-topic and still in-scope of the site.

In this case, some people can still play the game

The Wikipedia page for Star Wars: Tiny Death Star has this to say:

If a user had previously downloaded the game (i.e.: via GooglePlay), said user can re-download the game, despite its being unavailable. Some features (such as the Tapjoy Bux purchasing) are disabled, but players can still tend to their Bitizens.

So presumably there are still people out there who are playing Star Wars: Tiny Death Star and could ask or answer questions about it.

If you want to have this "obsolete lock" feature be added…

…then the best thing to do is post a feature request on Meta Stack Exchange.

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  • "some people can still play", I'd disregard this. No idea, whether that's true. The game was terminated so long ago, I find it unlikely the files are still in the store by now and it's impossible to verify. Then, if it's available, it's questionable, whether it still works on a more modern OS. Even, if it works, the number of people still playing it is small and gets smaller (lose google acc, stop playing, etc.) with no chance of it ever getting bigger. Finally, the likelihood, that people who started playing the game 4+ years ago, go here to ask/answer questions about it, is miniscule.
    – Dulkan
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 11:25
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    @Dulkan That’s all moot since we can’t do anything about the tag with Stack Exchange’s current capabilities.
    – Thunderforge
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 11:51
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    @Dulkan We don't delete questions about games just because they're unpopular. Additionally, what thunderforge says is true, as it's fairly common that "taken down" in a digital store just means new customers can't buy it, but anyone we already owns it can still download it. I understand that these bumps can be annoying, but it's just a few posts a year. It's not a big deal.
    – Wipqozn Mod
    Commented Jun 27, 2018 at 21:40
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    @Dulkan you could always add the game to your ignored tags?
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Jun 29, 2018 at 6:31
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As Thunderforge points out folks who already downloaded the game still have access to it, so we can't delete or close these questions. It doesn't matter they may only help a few folks, because we don't delete questions about a game just because it's unpopular. If it was completely unplayable that would be a different story, but that isn't the case here.

Looking over these questions quite a few of these are bugs, so I suggest we just leave a community wiki answer on the bug questions state the game is no longer being maintained, and therefore there's no fix to their problem. Provided these answers get at least one upvote then it should stop community from bumping them to the front page.

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  • I think long-term, this might be the best solution. I have a prototype community-wiki answer here: gaming.stackexchange.com/a/336945/28182, variations of this could be used to provide each of the (now 13) unresolved questions with an answer
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Aug 3, 2018 at 6:55

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