Today, someone asked Why do we need both Priority and Severity? (10k link) which is clearly on-topic being about software development concepts and all that, but was soon closed as primarily opinion based. That's correct, as it was not an exact duplicate of the much older How do you classify bug severity? (10k link) which was also closed as opinion-based (again, correctly).
But as I went back to these questions, I suddenly found them both murdered deleted – by a mod, so I can't vote to undelete. Why were these questions deleted? Should we delete all questions as soon as they are closed? Or should we keep closed questions around if they solicited at least one valuable answer?
I asked the all-knowing help center, which told me:
Questions that are extremely off topic, or of very low quality, may be removed at the discretion of the community and moderators. Over time, closed questions that are not useful as signpoints to other questions may also be removed, as well as questions which have no significant activity over a very long period after being asked. If you want to improve a question to keep it from being deleted, click the edit button beneath it.
These questions were neither extremely off topic (only a bit opinion-based), and not of very low quality. As such, I'm not sure that these questions meet the criteria for deletion.
I frequently vote to delete a question if:
- it is not reasonably possible to edit them into a comprehensible, on-topic question
- and it is of low quality, e.g. as indicated by many downvotes
- or if it is a remnant of the not-programming-related days which featured a significantly different site scope.
Is my focus on topicality as the main criterion for the delete/no delete correct, or do we as a community decide to apply stricter standards?