[ohr]

(author here): on the contrary, my point is that I was wrong(ish), and I often think about that before I get angry at other people on the internet.

The other point is that there's (usually) no need to choose between good moderation and civility, and at least IMO "blatantly off-topic and should be deleted" really fails at being civil.

[shprd]

> "blatantly off-topic and should be deleted" really fails at being civil.

How would you express that instead? There was nothing harsh said here. Is it the word "blatantly"?

[ohr]

well yes! also calling an answer which mentions c++ as well “off-topic”, it’s not like I wrote a haiku about marmalade.

And why insist on deleting if people found it useful? It’s literally at the bottom of the page, so it’s not a public menace or anything.

[shprd]

I'm not involved in this in any way, so I can't definitely say why. But maybe I can share some points:

1. Regarding the answer being old (This seem a major point from your article)

Answers on SO are intended to be a living organism. It's expected to be maintained very much like code. If you look at answers related to CSS and JS, you'll find many cases of answers[1] originally written in 2008 that are still up-to-date and were updated by various contributors to cover multiple specifications over the years. That's just how it works. Notice how questions are designed to have one accepted answer. So, answers ideally should never fall under "its just something I wrote 10 years ago". It's not a book.

2. Was the answer helpful? or was it noise?

Like you said, the answer was at the bottom of the page, and that's because the majority of people even before the discussion, have found other answers more helpful and voted for them instead over this. What to conclude from this? I believe that was the topic of the meta discussion, and we play by the community rules. Stackoverflow is designed to work similar to Wikipedia. If I was a involved with the discussion, I have no strong feeling about the answer and would probably vote to keep it because it's not harmful per say. But mods and active users are the ones qualified to set the policy that best serve the site/community over time based on their observations.

3. It's nothing personal

The quality of the answer is what matters. The same person can have terrible and great answers. Both the author of the comment and the meta discussion seem to be criticizing the answer and expressing their frustration with it (Rightfully or not). But you went beyond criticizing certain toxic behavior or culture, especially with the parallel you draw at the end to "drives this point home." which seem to be insulting them as a person. There was nothing civil about that IMHO.

[1] How the answer to "How can I horizontally center an element?" evolved over the years: https://stackoverflow.com/posts/114549/revisions