With regards to removing question text from posts that break the daily thread rule

I’ve seen it numerous times where the text of a question is removed because it wasn’t in the daily thread. These posts often attract great answers, so it’s very unfortunate for future generations of learners who have those same questions that the question text gets deleted. Can it just be locked/archived with a message about posting in the daily thread instead? At least that way, users will be motivated to use the daily thread, because their question gets locked, and then questions that have already attracted great answers regardless won’t be obfuscated by [removed].

2 comments
  1. >I’ve seen it numerous times where the text of a question is removed because it wasn’t in the daily thread. These posts often attract great answers

    This debate is everywhere on reddit (or any other QA site for that matter), and has been around since before online forums got popular. On one hand, people dislike having the exact same questions that are asked every week cluttering their feed. On the other hand, general threads or “megathreads” in Reddit parlance, are far from the ideal environment to foster organized discussion. I don’t really know of a definitive solution unfortunately.

    If you archive the question, the person asking will still have gotten their answers and have little to no incentive to use the thread. Unless the question gets archived before it receives any answers (in which case, why even keep it?).

    I guess ideally, linking to duplicate questions stack-exchange style could be a possible solution, but I doubt it would be practical on Reddit given how its search function is kind of… sub-optimal, to put it lightly.

  2. Another issue here is also, to put it bluntly, RTFM. Regardless of the pros and cons it’s written clearly and people that ignore it are really not paying attention at all or think they’re above the community decided rules. One bandaid rip of having a post yanked and you’ll use the megathread in the future. But if the rules keep on being bent forever then there’s no point in having them and it becomes a free-for-all.

    Endlessly asked questions should be in the wiki, ideally. Sometimes they’re not, so perhaps the answer is to have some folks take some time periodically to transcribe things there and link to threads, or megathread comments, that are particularly helpful. Any volunteers?

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