Answers Hygiene - How do you handle of out of date answers?

[chris]

Hi,

Splunk Answers has been around for a while. Is there a way to mark answers as deprecated? Or can I specify which splunk version a question refers too (if this is tracked the I could search for answers that refer to the version I want). Or should we just down vote if an answer does not help any more?

Thanks
Chris

[piebob · Accepted solution]

hi all,

thank you for summoning me, @markthompson :).

we do know this is an issue we need to address--one of the side-effects of so much amazing content is that some of it will be out of date. one thing we're hoping to implement soon is requiring that you specify the version you're asking about in your question. this would be combined with a scrub of the existing content to mark it with versions as possible. it's a big effort (at least, the second part is--we're investigating the first part now).

it would certainly be helpful if members of the community would tag posts with applicable versions as they come across them, as well as commenting on whether something worked in a given version or not, per @ramdaspr ' s suggestion. i agree that downvoting seems harsh unless the answer never worked.

so again, thanks for the feedback--it's all valuable, and we are hoping to address the issue soon.

[ppablo]

Just to add, since I've come on board as a moderator, I've been adding version numbers when I edit posts from what I can gather in the context of a user's question. I started in June 2014, so unfortunately, I haven't been able to go back through 40,000+ posts to retroactively add appropriate content. I do add version numbers to questions as they go live to help folks filter their searches as much as possible. If a post is not specific enough, I'll usually ask the user in a comment to provide more details and encourage the habit of including version numbers to prevent a constant back and forth comment thread of information gathering.

If you have other suggestions or need help with editing something, feel free to summon me as well. I usually review 99.9% of content that comes up on this site. Thanks everyone for the suggestions and helping to improve the Splunk Answers experience.

[jeffland]

I'm also interested in an official answer on that, as I've seen the problem dealt with differently from question to question.

[markthompson]

@piebob - Please provide an official insight into this.

[ramdaspr]

It might be useful to just add a comment stating it doesnt work in so-n-so version.. Or retag a post to mention the version.

Downvoting seems a bit harsh.

Might be useful to have some of the Splunk Moderators weigh in on the official stance.

[markthompson]

Downvoting isn't fair as at the time, the question may have been relevant, and if someone's looking for an answer, it makes it seem like that answer may not work. Plus gives negative reputation for a perfectly valid question / answer.