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In the faq it says that we need to delete published answers

When you post your question on the main site, edit the sandbox post to include a link to the challenge, removing everything but the title and the link. This is to keep the sandbox more compact and reduce the scrolling needed to view other proposals. Furthermore, delete the post. (You should edit it anyway, because high-reputation users can still see deleted posts.)

In the sandbox also said that we need to delete the answers after posting:

When you think your challenge is ready for the public, go ahead and post it, and replace the post here with a link to the challenge and delete the sandbox post.

After some researches I found these two questions:

where the community votes to delete the answers in sandbox after publishing:

Delete them

Sandbox posts are like comments, not something we need a permanent record of. For anyone who does want to look back through the history of how a question was sculpted before being posted, deleted answers are still visible to high rep users.

  1. Delete posted challenges, keep abandoned.

But in reality a lot of people keep their answers in sandbox after publishing and everyone does it: low-reputed, high-reputed, moderator, etc.

A number of posted challenges in the sandbox, edited down to stubs but not deleted

Do not misunderstand me. I'm not blaming anyone, I'm just wondering what is the reason for this behavior? Because when the question is raised about whether answers should be deleted, almost everyone votes for "It needs to be deleted", and then they don't delete them so I'm little confused :)

I also found this question Are we still deleting sandbox posts? where we can see two diametrically opposed answers. Both of them have almost same count of votes which means that the community in general supports both

+15 supporting not deleting, +16 supporting deleting

In my mind we have two options:

  • Delete all posted answers (follow the rules)
  • Keeps all posted answers (change the rules)

I understand that they are again two diametrically opposed options. But I think that we need statistic about how many users follow the rules and how many users doesn't. After that, we will not "choose" which is more correct, but obey the statistics (i.e. the majority)

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    \$\begingroup\$ Hi! I've edited out some of the images to replace them with quotes, and added alt text to the remaining images (which I couldn't find a good way to turn into quotes). It's usually best to try to include the text from images when possible, for accessibility and other purposes. \$\endgroup\$ Feb 17 at 19:55
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    \$\begingroup\$ @RydwolfPrograms Thank you for edits! \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 17 at 20:00

4 Answers 4

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Change the rules in the faq/sandbox

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  • \$\begingroup\$ As a low-reputed user (at the moment of posting), after reading all arguments I think it is more useful to not delete the answers and only modifing them to reduce the size. I can't vote for my answers, so +1 for this answer \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 11:52
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Promote editing down over deleting, discourage deleting, but make it clear it's allowed

First of all, deleting answers in the Sandbox doesn't save any space for 10k+ users if the answers aren't also edited down. So, the first thing that should be done to a posted proposal is that it be edited down into a stub, and I encourage people to edit such proposals down if the author doesn't do so in a reasonable amount of time.

Additionally, deleting answers in the Sandbox, while saving space for users with less than 10k reputation has a number of problems, as pointed out by Wheat Wizard. Namely,

  • Feedback and editing histories of the question are hidden for a number of users
  • It makes it a lot harder to search for duplicate/failed challenge ideas, as deleted answers are almost impossible to search for.

Therefore, I suggest we make it clear that people should definitely edit their answers down, and, while it isn't recommended, they are welcome to delete their posted proposals

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  • \$\begingroup\$ If the deleting answers has many disadvantages, why not just ban the deleting answers? I don't mean to restrict he users or ban them if they delete answers but just say in faq don't delete the post instead of delete the post \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 12:08
  • \$\begingroup\$ I didn't noticed it before but in sandbox also said that we must delete the answer after posting (add this to question too) so we need to change the rules there too \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 12:23
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    \$\begingroup\$ @EzioMercer In order for rules to work they must be enforced. If we ban deleting answers then we are going to need users to flag them and moderators to handle the flags. It's totally reasonable to think that answers, shouldn't be deleted but also think it's not worth the time and effort required to enforce a ban. \$\endgroup\$
    – Wheat Wizard Mod
    Feb 13 at 20:03
  • \$\begingroup\$ @WheatWizard No, I didn't mean to do anything with users. Just as we don't do anything to users who delete replies and those who don't, we won't do anything in the future. Just change the rules from delete to don't delete and that's it. I mean I don't want to see in rules something like it is better to don't delete the answer \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 20:28
  • \$\begingroup\$ "First of all, deleting answers in the Sandbox doesn't save any space for 10k+ users ..." is no longer the case, since they're pushed to the bottom \$\endgroup\$ Feb 17 at 19:59
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Follow the rules in the faq/sandbox

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Edit the rules to allow both deleting and not deleting sandbox posts

People should still be allowed to delete their sandbox posts if they want to.

I see the sandbox guidelines more as "Explaining to new people how we usually do things" rather than "Rules everyone should follow". Experienced users don't read the rules anyways so it's useless to try to change their behavior in this way.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ I thought about it, but this option doesn't change anything. The behavior will be the same. Just the action of users who doesn't delete the answsr will be legal. I want to know is deleting answers a problem or a feature? And I think we must have one option delete all posted or keep all posted answers \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 10:56
  • \$\begingroup\$ The behavior being the same is good though, the only issue is the confusing description \$\endgroup\$
    – mousetail
    Feb 13 at 10:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ We can't expect anyone to actually change their behavior, best we can do is change the rules to match what people already do. Nobody reads the rules anyways \$\endgroup\$
    – mousetail
    Feb 13 at 10:58
  • \$\begingroup\$ I think the problems start after the user is able to see deleted answers. I don't have enough reputation to see deleted answers, so I can't say objective opinion. Because of this I want to collect more data for statistics and only after then decide, which options is more comfortable \$\endgroup\$
    – EzioMercer
    Feb 13 at 11:06

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