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Over the last couple of days, I've started seeing bursts of large numbers (i.e. 10-15) of older questions being flagged for closure. Is this a change of policy being implemented or is some individual decided to go off farming the content on their own?

My general feel from the way I'm seeing these review requests coming in is that it's an individual and I see nothing on meta indicating a policy change, so for old ones I've been flagging as "leave open" because I don't see any purpose to a qusetion that was asked and answered in 2012 or before suddenly needing to be purged, but I thought I'd mention it in case I've missed some policy change -- or to warn out that someone seems to be doing this to the content...

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    Maybe an example... I don't know what you are talking about.
    – dpollitt
    Jan 30, 2015 at 2:54
  • Sure, to the degree I can. two nights ago I checked in about 11PM PST and looked at what was up for review, and where I might normally see 1 or 2, there were 15 articles up for closure review. The next night, about the same time, about eight. almost all of them were from 2012 or before with no recent activity. Very anomalous from the normal review queue content. if I continue to see it I'll try to capture more detail. from the timing, it felt like the work of one person and seemed out of place to me.
    – chuqui
    Jan 30, 2015 at 4:21
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    I've selected leave open in some and locked others. There's no age limit on voting to close and this can happen when old questions get new answers or somebody goes on an editing roll for a badge. So, I would suggest using your judgement on it.
    – Joanne C
    Jan 30, 2015 at 8:16
  • My, too. I was just surprised to see them start surfacing in numbers when it didn't seem to be part of a group-driven effort. that's why I flagged it in case it was a case of potential abuse...
    – chuqui
    Jan 30, 2015 at 16:08

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I saw these too; I think probably someone (without enough privs to actually vote to close) is flagging them for review.

I disagree with your basic premise that old questions should be left alone. If they're no longer relevant or helpful, they should be closed; or, otherwise, improved so they're up to the current quality standards of the site.

We don't want this to be like a discussion forum, where today's threads are useful and then there's 99.99% historic garbage. It should be more of a knowledge base.

This is, after all, why we have the Necromancer and Revival badges. Old questions can and should be updated (and if something about the question makes it so that's not the case, that's usually a sign that it should indeed be closed).

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  • Thanks, Matt. that's a main reason I asked this -- trying to understand what the policy was so I could follow it, and not try to set it based on what I'd prefer to do.
    – chuqui
    Feb 2, 2015 at 16:08
  • Like you say, the above is my view, but I do think it represents general site policy / attitudes.
    – mattdm
    Feb 2, 2015 at 16:11
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I guess I'm the individual. I just gained access to the close questions review queue and went through the questions it offered me.

From your questions it seems that you disagree with the close votes, so am I voting too conservative?

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  • if it was offering them to you, bart, it wasn't you, because someone initiated the close review. Someone did.I did flag some of them to leave them open, but don't take that to presume I think you're wrong; it's a judgement call and what matters is the consensus opinion, not mine...
    – chuqui
    Jan 31, 2015 at 2:50

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