[shepmaster]

> Rust has similar issues

I really do try my hardest to keep old questions and answers relevant. Stack Overflow allows editing Q&A for a reason, and any time I stumble on an older post, I at least think about updating it.

One thing that I've occasionally found frustrating is that someone sees a question was asked 2 years ago and thus assumes that it must be invalid / out-of-date. They simply don't look at the edit dates.

Remember that Rust has a pretty strong backwards compatibility guarantee. Any answer using only the standard library in the last 3 years should still be valid (crates are a different concern). If you find a question you think has become stale, add a bounty to it to raise attention — that's the SO recommended path of action.

We also have a Rust chatroom on SO where a bunch of regulars hang out and people are welcome to pop in and ask if a Q&A is still valid.

[lovich]

Should the answers be edited? Everyones had to work with software on the job that wasn't the latest edition. If we edit answers to software after every update doesn't that just fuck over everyone who's not capable of updating?

[shepmaster]

As your other responses have stated, editing doesn't necessarily mean "destroy the old and replace it".

A lot of the editing I do is to improve the grammar, reduce fluff, use Rust-standard indentation, improve the formatting, include complete error messages, update links, etc. None of that should affect users of older versions other than to make it easier to get to the core content of the Q/A.

When a new Rust feature comes out, usually the original part of the answer gets a header denoting the compatibility. https://stackoverflow.com/a/28953618/155423 is such an example.

Note that SO does keep a revision log of edits (e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/posts/28953618/revisions) to a post. You can browse that if you think there might be something hidden that's worth exploring. This doesn't necessarily help with search engines, of course.

[dasil003]

I often update my answers over time to cover multiple versions, usually as the result of someone leaving a comment pointing out a problem. It's pretty easy to do in a way that preserves the old information (eg. https://stackoverflow.com/a/1576221/8376).

[acjohnson55]

You shouldn't necessarily erase history, but it's pretty easy to move your old text under an Old Answer banner or something, if you still think the info is relevant to someone or even that surfacing the delta between versions is educational.

[SCdF]

To be clear, Rust is easily 10x better than JS in that regard, it was just an obvious example for me to use where <1.0 code is now weird and wrong :-)

I have nearly given up looking for JS answers in SO because they are such garbage these days. I am learning Rust right now and still find answers on there useful.

[shepmaster]

> where <1.0 code is now weird and wrong

We actually have a specific tag for those cases (`rust-obsolete`), so if the question / answer cannot be rehabilitated for Rust 1.0, that's a useful thing (I also try to add an in-question disclaimer to make it easier to spot)