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This question drew my eye today:

https://codereview.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/41/obsolete-iterative-code-reviews-how-can-they-happen-successfully-obsolete

and I found out there are several other questions with the *OBSOLETE* modifier (for lack of a better word) in the title on CR-meta. This surprised me, as I have never seen this on other metas before (could be me, but still).

It seems to me that just like tags, 'answered' notices etc., this is meta-information about the question and should be handled otherwise. It is currently handled otherwise even: it is locked and has a historical note.

So why the extra tag? It seems to go against most thoughts about good titles and how to add meta-information about a question, so my first reaction would be to suggest an edit to remove it.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I expect these posts are marked as such because the information in it has been superseded. That doesn't happen often, hence the extreme method of display. \$\endgroup\$
    – Mast Mod
    Oct 13, 2015 at 11:44
  • \$\begingroup\$ That seems like an odd way to do it. What do other sites do in cases like this? \$\endgroup\$ Oct 13, 2015 at 11:50
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    \$\begingroup\$ Well, the close + historical note seems right? Feels a bit like 'close-as-duplicate' with extra content, but with that note added I see no need for a defaced title to be honest \$\endgroup\$
    – Nanne
    Oct 13, 2015 at 12:12
  • \$\begingroup\$ See meta.codereview.stackexchange.com/questions/6067/… - the "obsolete" posts have now been deleted. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 14, 2015 at 13:21

1 Answer 1

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Questions on meta marked with "obsolete" in the title are there for historical reasons only. There were times when certain policies and procedures were introduced to streamline the use of Code Review as a site, and, after that, a new, better policy was introduced making the old one obsolete.

Where questions are marked as obsolete they also have a link to the new, improved policy/process/procedure.

For example:

have all been replaced with:

As far as I can tell, those are the only OBSOLETE-marked questions

Questions like the above obsolete ones have come from the early days of the site's beta.

It would be reasonable to suggest that obsolete questions are simply deleted..... would make a good question on meta.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Apart from the "What are obsolete questions", which you answer very correctly, I was wondering why it was decided to change the title. This is as far as I know a frowned-upon method to add this kind of meta-data. For the historical part, there is the note. For other usages the locking is enough. So apart from what to do with these specific questions, I wondered at the implied 'legality' of marking a certain state with extra tags in the title (which is disagree with) \$\endgroup\$
    – Nanne
    Oct 13, 2015 at 12:59
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Nanne - good point. The change in the title was because people would search for "invalidation", or "iterative", and then paste a link to the post in a comment when some user edited their question and invalidated answers. Locking would not solve that common problem from a while ago.... I think a straight delete would be fine. \$\endgroup\$
    – rolfl
    Oct 13, 2015 at 13:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ that does raise a separate issue maybe: maybe we need to make status (locked) etc visible in searching? \$\endgroup\$
    – Nanne
    Oct 13, 2015 at 13:46
  • \$\begingroup\$ My votes goes to just deleting them. We wouldn't actually lose the history, it would simply only be visible to higher rep users. I'll try to post a separate meta later. \$\endgroup\$
    – RubberDuck
    Oct 13, 2015 at 15:30
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    \$\begingroup\$ Done. The obsolete posts are now deleted. \$\endgroup\$ Oct 14, 2015 at 13:22

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