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I asked in this Question but did not receive any response:

Outdated Answers Due to Patches

So since "too localized" does not exist anymore, how do we tag questions that are outdated and are not salvageable such as this one:

How does follower experience (XP) and leveling work?

Followers don't need to be leveled anymore, they have an automated levelup when the player has one. So this question would confuse any new players of this particular game. So it should be removed.

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    I think we agreed in this post to just edit in a disclaimer saying the question/answer is out of date. Personally I'd rather just remove the post like you said.
    – l I
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 12:28
  • Also: this question is much more recent then what you referring to.
    – Arperum
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 12:30
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    I really really really don't see the point in doing anything other than deletion. Reminder: you keep reputation from deleted posts that had enough score (5?) and remained on the site for long enough (6 months).
    – badp
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 12:30
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    I really really really don't see the point in deleting valid content that shows off our expertise, just because something outside our control has changed.
    – au revoir
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 14:18
  • @JasonBerkan When googling for informations about Diablo 3, many top google results come from this site. And many results are outdated. So I do see the point of it.
    – BadSnowflake
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 14:44
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    And as agent86s answer states, leaving that content around with a disclaimer helps the Internet more than deleting it.
    – au revoir
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 16:56
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    @badp 3 score & 60 days
    – 3ventic
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 17:39
  • @jason "valid"? How? How can any content on follower experience possibly be valid and describe correctly the state of the game? I think you're cherry picking the one discussion that's against deletion vs the other ones linked in the question body for.
    – badp
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 17:42
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    I personally don't think "This question is off topic because it is too localized" should be a thing.
    – Unionhawk Mod
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 0:49

1 Answer 1

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We certainly don't want to use question tags to mark questions as no longer relevant, and honestly I think that the only correct way to mark this content as such is with the soft pink shade of deletion.

The whole idea behind organising information on Stack Exchange is that you would have a question, and you would Google for it, and we would have a laser-focused answer, and the answer would be always correct because it's really easy to edit existing answers or write new ones altogether.

Okay, but now the mechanic is removed. The game is updated for everybody, or almost everybody. The world moved on. So should we.

Ask yourself: as a new player of this game would I ask this question? Would I change how it's phrased? Can I do that while keeping the current answers relevant?

If the answer is no, why would we keep the question? What good does that do?

We really can't hope to get away with a little disclaimer tacked on somebody's answer. Best case scenario the disclaimer reflects the current state of the world ("followers no longer gain XP at all") and as a result the rest of the answer is useless and wrong. Worst case scenario, we are copy pasting the same blurb on a bunch of questions ("This no longer applies to the current game, sorry") and that it's just a waste of time for everybody visiting the page.

We may get some kind of feel-good warm fuzzy feeling in our hearts knowing that we are providing archaeologists the means to discover what the world of trading in Team Fortress 2 was before Steam Trading happened. Archaeologists however are not our audience. Our audience is by over 90% made of people who are making a Google search because they need help here and now.

We should focus on them, and we would do them a disservice to keep wrong, irrelevant trivia about the past that's never coming back.

We have been very aggressive in making sure that we are no host for questions that can't be given relevant answers, and we are being richly rewarded for it. I wish that we would be just as aggressive in keeping our content fresh and relevant despite how much harder it is with potentially hundreds of questions on a single tag rotting all at once.

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    Honestly, I could see utility in having answers updated to explain why content is out of date, and when it became out of date, since other sites will continue to be littered with references to them (such as Nephalem Valor). However, I can't think of a clean way to ensure that all out-of-date content has updated disclaimers such as are in the top answer to that question, so I agree that just nuking them is probably the cleanest, most sensible approach.
    – Beofett
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 19:06
  • @beofett that would probably be better suited as its own question ("what happened to experience for followers?")
    – badp
    Commented Apr 1, 2014 at 21:37
  • Would a compromise be an outdated tag? This way nearly everyone who is active here could maintain those questions that are totally not rescueable. They would still be there, but everyone could see at a glimpse that the question is outdated. Again, I am only referring to questions that in itself are outdated and therefore, updates are not possible. Like the example I linked.
    – BadSnowflake
    Commented Apr 2, 2014 at 15:15
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    Not that I think it's a terribly compelling argument, but it may still be possible to have a version of the game in a state where the question is relevant, such as an unpatched PS3 version of the game. Since the console versions don't require always-online, you could theoretically have never patched since installation. So it could be useful to someone other than archaeologists. Still, the number of people in this situation is almost certainly vanishingly small.
    – Sterno
    Commented Apr 3, 2014 at 20:25
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    I've made an argument somewhere but I can't find it, so I'm going to summarize: if they game is unplayable in its older state (MMOs are a good example of this), then the question should be removed. If the game is still playable in its old state, then its still relevant info to someone. Minecraft being the standard example, as the new game launcher allows us to go back to older versions, where the bug workarounds or glitch carts are still relevant.
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 0:52
  • @robot yes, for a vanishingly small amount of people, information about older releases of Minecraft is relevant and Stack Exchange is very poorly equipped to be helpful for them. Are you going to try and argue the same of Diablo 3?
    – badp
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 1:11
  • @badp - does diabolo 3 allow people to still connect to the auction house/ play anything but the most current version? I honestly don't know, I'm only going off what people have told me of D3, haven't played it
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 4:13
  • @Robotnik Diablo 3 is an always online game. I am very confident you can only play the most recent version.
    – badp
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 9:25
  • Then any question dealing with the auction house etc should be deleted, which is what I said - if its unplayable in its older state, then delete
    – Robotnik Mod
    Commented Apr 4, 2014 at 23:50

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