Should this question that is not being automatically deleted due to a bug be deleted manually?

Question

This question meets the criteria for automatic Roomba deletion as RemoveAbandonedClosed. In particular, it:

• has been closed more than 9 days ago, for a reason other than duplicate
• has a non-positive score
• is not locked
• has no positively-scoring answers
• has no accepted answer
• has no pending reopen votes (as best as I can see in the timeline)
• has not been edited in the past 9 days.

This question should have been automatically deleted by the system as it meets all of the criteria listed in the help page. However, as the question was migrated from another site, the question is not being deleted due to a bug. Basically, there's a code optimization that prevents questions that were originally migrated from other sites from being deleted by most of the Roomba scripts, including the one in question here. This optimization is based on an assumption that was true at the time, but is no longer true due to recent feature changes (more info in footnote).

I was about to flag the question for deletion citing the bug and the fact that it should have been automatically deleted had it not been for the bug, but I figured I should instead start a discussion here and allow the community to decide whether the question should be deleted or not. The point of the deletion criteria in general is to remove questions that aren't useful additions to the site and to reduce clutter in search results for users searching for answers; perhaps this question might be a useful addition with some curation.

_{More information: in the past, all questions that were migrated from other sites and later closed would be marked as "rejected migrations" and would thus be locked, and locked questions were excluded from the affected Roomba criteria. Because it was safe to assume that a closed question that was migrated from another site would also be locked, this code optimization was implemented, perhaps because querying for a question's locked status would take more time. However, in June 2019, the system was changed to no longer mark migrated questions as "rejected" if they were closed a long time after they were migrated; this meant that closing migrated questions wouldn't always lock them, and so we end up with the now no longer true assumption.}

Answer 1

Thank you for bringing this up on Meta!

I'll start by saying that this question has no pending reopen votes and has not appeared on the reopen review queue since it was closed.

My opinion is that the question should be deleted. It is not a good identification question because the details given are too broad to be able to pin down what genre the OP is looking for.

Indeed, Chris says in their answer (emphasis mine):

You didn't say much that helps narrow it down, but I'm going to take a guess that what you played was something at least inspired by one of the great polyphonic African-American musical styles.

The OP also admits in an update that:

Maybe I'm not looking for a genre, but just for a specific song. I don't know.

It's simply far too vague to be of any lasting value, and I think deletion is an appropriate next step for this question now that it's closed. Ideally, the Roomba would have taken care of it quietly just like so many other questions, but because of the bug that you pointed out this one now requires manual attention.

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I'll add that Chris is not only the user with the highest all-time reputation but also the most prolific answerer on this site. The unique perspective they bring about African-American music in particular is truly valuable. Naturally, their answers are generally of high-quality and might be a point in favour of preserving the question.

However, it should not be difficult to ask another question that is more focussed and to which Chris' answer can be moved (with minor modifications) in order to preserve it. (I am willing to volunteer to compose such a question.) I don't think this particular question needs to be retained solely to preserve Chris' answer.

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We have had related discussions in the past about what to do about questions that are answered correctly but have now become obsolete because of link rot. The consensus seems to be that:

• first, such questions should be improved to the extent possible (either by contacting the OP, or rewriting it to add relevant info),
• if the question turns out to be unsalvageable and has a correct but "bad" answer (just the names of the song and artist, link to the song, and no Google-able potential), then closure followed by deletion is appropriate.
• however, if a correct answer is truly worth preserving, then the question should be closed but need not be deleted.

In this case, the question does not possess a correct answer, so these minutiae do not apply, so one can (and should, in my opinion) proceed firmly towards deleting such questions.

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Speaking of "such questions", there are currently 16 ID questions that are closed not as duplicate and which do not have any accepted answer. Almost all of them fall under the same category as this one and can be deleted — except for the two highest-voted questions. None of the other 14 questions have entered the reopen queue since their closure, but:

• Identify this genre and performance: DJ with live instruments has gone through 4 reopen cycles — starting on 2016-04-29, 2017-05-12, 2017-05-31 and 2019-04-09, respectively, and
• Early-2000s music video, triangle logo flying towards audience, appeared on "Rage" has gone through 3 reopen cycles — starting on 2018-04-11, 2020-01-03 and 2020-02-13, respectively.

Each of those reviews was invalidated because the reopen votes got expired. This is...problematic, to say the least, and these are not the only instances of expiring close/reopen votes.

Answer 2

This is not a bug, this is how the roomba is intended. This was not deleted by the romba because not all the conditions were met. See the page quoted above:

If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...

• has −1 or lower score

  * has no answers

• is not locked

Having an answer keeps it roomba proof. It can be flagged for moderator attention for deletion if needed.