Curious delete vote

Question

I saw a delete vote on a rather highly voted question Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else?. And yes, I do have the top answer there.

This delete vote confuses me.

Part of the reason the question recently regained my attention is that I got an announcer badge from it (and I don't announce things). It turns out that it is linked from an external resource - ars technica - Ask Stack: Is it OK to split into small functions, even if they’re called once?. I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted as they are used as examples of Programmers.SE. (The list of ars technica posts that have an author of 'stack-exchange' can be seen at http://arstechnica.com/author/stack-exchange/ )

Building on this, questions that are used by major news sources bring eyeballs to the site which is a key part of the SE business strategy. Like the questions or not, deleting these questions would be counter productive to the people that keep the lights on at the site.

Secondly, it has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted. The associated MSO discussion - Do not delete duplicates!

If I am missing something in the best practices for 10k tools, I would appreciate being informed what it is that I'm missing so I too can cast a delete vote on the question with a clear conscious and understanding of how .

If, on the other hand, someone else is missing some part of understanding of what to delete and not to delete, until the question is deleted (and given its high vote question and answers takes quite a few more votes), I would have difficulty knowing who to articulate my comments to (to the best of my knowledge, delete votes are private until they are acted upon), and thus am broadcasting them here.

Tangential question: If Stack Exchange wishes to keep these featured questions from news and blog around (and make note of them?) - should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted (either by an errant migration and close or misinformed mod or an over zealous 10ker?)

Answer 1

That's a lot of questions, and they are all valid, but they avoid a basic principle of voting, which is this: Community members can use their votes however they wish, so long as they are not being abusive.

I believe it would be a bad thing for such questions to get deleted

But the community may not.

It has been fairly long and established policy that questions that are dupes to other questions shouldn't be deleted

... Unless they are. The community may not deem the post worthy of preservation.

should there be a 'major news source/blog' lock to prevent closed questions that have been featured in a way that SE wants to maintain from being accidentally deleted?

Ask for a "historical lock." But be prepared to defend your request with reasoning and evidence; historical locks are used very sparingly, and only under very specific circumstances.

What is a historical lock, and what is it used for?

Answer 2

I think there is a misunderstanding, from the community, between closing a question and deleting it. FAQ doesn't help neither.

• Closing should be applied to any question which is wrong from FAQ's point of view.

  Closing is an indication that the question has a problem: an indication for both the original author and the subsequent visitors, would they be willing to answer or comment, or simply ask a similar question.

• Deleting, on the other hand, should be an extreme measure.

  Deleting is not an indication; it's a way to make the question disappear for anybody except members with high reputation. It also throws away the votes, which is extremely impolite for the users who took time to answer the question.

  There is nothing wrong in deleting a question which is "totally wrong": this includes spam or offensive speech, questions written by illiterate people who make no effort whatsoever, questions obviously off-topic (for example a question about horse breeds on Programmers.SE) or obviously duplicate (for example a question which copy-pastes another one), etc. But that's all.

  It's the degree of wrongness which should determine whether the question can be deleted or simply closed.

Personally, I follow the following guidelines:

1. Vote to delete if the question is totally wrong.

2. Vote to delete if the question is wrong and has no interest whatsoever for anybody except the original poster.

3. Don't delete if the question may have an interest for someone except the original poster. Note that a question can serve as example of what is not welcome on Programmers.SE by its closed status. Delete the question, and the example will disappear, making it easier for future visitors to ask the same question again.

4. Don't delete if the question has many votes.

5. Don't delete a question which sucks but has a great or highly upvoted answer.

Obviously, I'm completely against the delete vote of the Is it OK to split long functions and methods into smaller ones even though they won't be called by anything else? question. It has 97 votes (98 if I count mine). It has an answer which received 156 upvotes. Yes, it should be closed, because it's a duplicate. But deleting it will not make Programmers.SE a better place.

As a side note:

• There was a question on Programmers.SE which I had answered. The question was marked as a duplicate, but the answer was more detailed than answers of other questions. For months, I kept linking the answer in other answers on Stack Exchange and in different discussions outside SE, until one day when the question was deleted by a moderator. The harm of such deletion was important, while it had no benefit whatsoever.

• There are plenty of questions on Stack Overflow I can't access because I don't have enough reputation, while those answers have a large amount of links to them. It's baffling to not being able to read them and feels wrong: a feeling compared to when you open Experts Exchange.