We Have a Messy Sandbox - Follow Up

Question

In We Have a Messy Sandbox the consensus was that the best way to clean our Sandbox is to delete posted challenges but keep abandoned ones.

The consensus also seemed to be that:

• These deleted posts should be edited down to a simple link to the real challenge (presumably with the title of the real challenge as the link text, like this). This is so users with high-rep don't have the deleted challenges cluttering their screens.

• Proposals that are duplicates or highly down voted or infeasible/impossible should also be deleted. Presumably their content can also be edited to reduce bulk.

Thus "abandoned" means something that has been forgotten or never completed, but still has the potential to make a good challenge.

Can everyone agree on these rules? What other details should be mentioned?

I want this post to serve as a definitive guide for what people should and shouldn't delete in the sandbox. An obvious problem is that you can only delete posts that aren't your own if they are down-voted enough (maybe that changes at some rep level, I'm not sure), so besides the editing this seems like a mods only task.

Side Question: As many of you know I make a lot of challenges but almost never post them in the Sandbox so I'm not the best judge of Sandbox mechanics, I just think it looks messy. Do you think Sandbox improvements like this will really help new (or old) users post good challenges?

Sandbox Deletion Rules

^{(I just made up the specifics, feel free to edit or suggest changes.)}

• Once a challenge from the Sandbox has been posted to the main page it should be edited down to a single large header that is a link to the posted challenge, then deleted if possible (example):

    #[Title of Deleted Challenge](url of posted challenge)
  

  ^{(What about comments?)}

• The following only applies to Sandbox proposals that have been inactive for more than 3 weeks:

  • Proposals that are clear duplicates of existing questions should edited with a link to the duplicate and deleted if possible:

      [Duplicate](url of original duplicate)
    

  • Proposals with a score of -3 or less should be edited to reduce bulk and deleted if possible.

  • Proposals that were otherwise already deleted should be edited to reduce bulk.

^{(Anything else?)}

Meta: How Stack Exchange Deleting Works

Answer 1

Normal users are not able to delete vote answers which don't have a negative score. So it would be great if one of our mods could go through the sandbox and delete every posted challenge.

The FAQ and Sandbox question should be updated to indicate that all future challenges should be deleted (by the author) after being posted.

That leaves inactive/incomplete/dropped proposals.

If they have a negative score there are usually some comments indicating that it's a duplicate, or just a bad idea or similar. In that case, I think everyone who can should delete vote (even at -1). Once they are deleted, I agree that they should be edited down, as well, to indicate the reason it was dropped and reduce clutter.

As for abandoned ideas, that were just forgotten or similar, we already have a consensus on the procedure for dealing with those - and if all the posted and dropped ones are deleted, it might actually be much easier to find the gems in the sandbox.

Answer 2

Sure many will not agree but why not just delete everything that has not been edited in the last 6 months. That gives plenty of time for people to discover old, abandoned gems and will also get rid of anything that has been posted to main but not removed from Sandbox.