1 upvotes, 1 direct replies (showing 1)
View submission: Voting & commenting on archived posts
What's wrong with a 4-year-old recipe?
Archiving old threads is a bigger problem than we've realized[1].
Comment by superfucky at 02/12/2021 at 15:05 UTC
1 upvotes, 1 direct replies
What's wrong with a 4-year-old recipe?
that's why i said *at best.* nothing wrong with a 4yo recipe, although if i publish a recipe and i still have people coming after me 4 years later going "can i substitute applesauce for butter in this recipe?" i'm likely to end up deleting it myself and slapping it up on some wix site with comments disabled. i don't spend a lot of time thinking about something i thought of 4 years ago, do you?
Archiving old threads is a bigger problem than we've realized
in the example you used here, the problem is that people are looking at outdated sources. if i'm googling a software problem in 2021, i'm not going to rely on a thread from 2015 as my primary source. when i google "how to turn off x feature" or "how to do x in y," i start by skimming the results for the most recent links because i *expect* that older sources are going to have outdated, irrelevant information. archiving those threads is actually a good way of signaling to the user "this information is old and likely irrelevant."
it's important to note that the OP *can* still edit archived threads, so if it's that critical that people coming from google be aware the information in the thread is no longer valid, then edit the post (if it's yours) or PM the OP to ask them to edit it. if OP's gone AWOL, message the mods to remove the thread/incorrect comments so they're not readable anymore. as a bonus, the next time google crawls through that thread, it'll update its archive and will no longer ping keyword searches for that software.
and even if we take your approach and just never archive anything, how is one comment 4 years later on a thread no one else is reading going to make a difference when all the misinformation is still upvoted to the top? is someone supposed to scroll through 147 comments saying "this software has a bug" to get to the one comment at the very bottom saying "this bug has since been resolved"? and if it's that critical to be able to do that, why can't it be opt-IN instead of opt-OUT?