in reply to Are We Coming to This?

Posts here are never really dead.

The reason that I say that is because this is a site that provides information, assistance and answers. Those answers from 9 months ago are typically still applicable.

If I am searching for some information, and I run across a flame, or misinformed post, I will still downvote it, I don't check the date.

Update:
Sorry, guess I should have made myself more clear. I also rarely downvote a post, though flames almost always get a -- from me.

I guess the point that I was trying to get across is that old posts still have value in this community (vs Slashdot where they could probably wipe their database every couple of weeks and no-one would notice). People still look at old posts a lot, hence it is not surprising for me to see that a post is being downvoted even if it is nine-months old.

In fact, I know that I have upvoted old posts as well. For all the same reasons that I ++ right now, they are well written, they add value to the community and they answer my question.

Obviously the community is not all about questions and answers, this is evidenced by how much higher on average non-code posts seem to be. I agree with this, and indeed is one of the benefits to this site.

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Question of Approach
by spudzeppelin (Pilgrim) on Jun 29, 2001 at 22:29 UTC

    That's interesting, since I rarely, if ever, vote anything down. In fact, I will occasionally vote posts up that I know contain incorrect approaches to a solution, if the errors are already cleared up in the ensuing discussion and the post has other merit (such as raising interesting questions/considerations, or spurring discussion forward).

    I also will vote posts of opinion up that I disagree with, for the same reasons. If all you are trying to take away from the community are information, assistance and answers, I think you're missing a large part of the point.

    I think the biggest thing is that I try to vote posts up in context, rather than trying to treat them as isolated "nuggets of debatable value". Also, reread my original post: if you're asking a question that is neither particlularly stupid nor offtopic, what is a rationale to ever vote that question down if it never got voted up to an unreasonably high level, especially nine months after the fact?

    Spud Zeppelin * spud@spudzeppelin.com

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