Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by brudgers 2203 days ago
On StackOverflow, anyone can edit any question. Anyone can edit any answer. If someone sees a problem, such as obsolescence they can fix it. Flagging "obsolete" doesn't fix anything. The person flagging is one of the someones in a "someone should fix this" flag.
2 comments
nix0n 2203 days ago
> On StackOverflow, anyone can edit any question. Anyone can edit any answer.

Neither of these things are true. In fact, to a user with zero reputation, StackOverflow is much more locked down than Wikipedia.

But the real issue with obsolete questions, is that a new question will be marked as a duplicate of an old obsolete question and closed before anyone has a chance to answer it.

So the real value of an obsolete tag would be that a new question couldn't be marked as a duplicate of an obsolete one.

link
brudgers 2203 days ago
Low reputation users' edits get reviewed. A zero reputation user is no more likely to have flagging privileges than other privileges. Optimizing for the zero reputation user in regard to obsolescence doesn't seem like a productive approach to me anyway.
link
jbay808 2203 days ago
The person flagging is most likely to be someone who doesn't know the updated answer, which is probably what brought them to that SO page where they discovered the answer marked correct no longer works.
link