Should we disable the Roomba?

Question

Roomba is a StackExchange-wide process that automatically deletes (among others) questions that fit these criteria:

• more than 365 days old
• has a score of 0, or a score of 1 in case of deleted owner
• has no answers
• is not locked
• has view count <= the age of the question in days times 1.5
• has 1 or 0 comments

QUESTION: Is Roomba good for us?
If not, should we ask the StackExchange staff to disable it on Software Recommendations?

Note: This question is about whether Roomba is good or not for us, not about whether disabling it is technically/bureaucratically feasible or not.

Related: Make sure your questions don't get deleted silently: beware of Roomba!

Answer 1

No, for a simple reason. There's another problem here:

has a score of 0

The Roomba (or this task, specifically) only deletes questions with score = 0. That means there's a very simple solution, and one that helps the site as a whole: people need to vote. If people aren't voting, the site won't work. That affects more than the effectiveness of the automated deletion scripts; it affects the number of people who have privileges.

Let's fix the problem, not the symptom. We need people to vote more; specifically on questions.

---

Pulling some data on this, 1145 (66%) out of all 1715 deleted questions, regardless of score, are closed. Those are questions we don't really want anyway, so we're only really looking at 570 questions here. of those, only 216 are zero-score. That's a little over two percent of our total 9939 questions.

I'm not sure there's a real problem here, even with our voting. 7636 (including deleted) of our questions have a score >= 1. Another 814 have a score <= -1 (the vast majority deleted). We're voting on most questions.

Answer 2

The Roomba needs to go away for this site. (It also needs to be changed for the other SE sites, but that's another story.)

First, let me say that this site is different than other StackExchange sites. Questions may not get attention because they are specialized, but that does not mean the questions are so poor that we should be deleting people's content. That's not respectful of the time and energy our contributors spent writing their question, nor is it respectful of their desire to contribute.

Second, sometimes questions don't get answers because there is no current software solution. But a clever developer may write a new application to fill that exact need. New products and applications are always being invented and developed. Why delete the question that may have inspired a developer to create a solution?

Last, but definitely not least, I agree with Undo that the big problem is that not enough people cast votes.

There seem to be two reasons involved:

1. StackExchange seems to largely attracts readers, but not contributors. Given that there are many SE questions with tens of thousands of views, but only a handful of votes, it's probable that many of those viewers are not interested in contributing. This SE is new, and therefore is a nice exception. I think we probably have one of the highest rates of contribution on SE. This leads me to item 2...

2. Most people on SE tend to be very selectively generous. Despite a fair amount of expertise in the field, I don't understand the psychology behind it, but I've seen it so frequently on SE that I can clearly identify it. Often people will provide an answer without even upvoting the question. That's just bizarre. If it's worth the time and energy to provide an answer, why not also give it an upvote (assuming they have the minimum rep)?

   I do understand the sociology behind it: with so few people casting votes, others are less likely to do so.

   Me, personally, when I read a question, and I think it is a good and useful question, I give it an upvote. When I read an answer, and it is accurate and helpful, I give it an upvote. I know it makes people feel good, so I do it. Why most others don't choose to perform generous and kind acts, I just don't understand.

That said, this site can certainly be part of a the solution: VOTE MORE!

But given that this problem has plagued the StackExchange culture for years, it will likely take time for positive change to take hold. Hopefully, we will learn, and StackExchange culture will change so that people are willing to compliment each other more via upvotes for good questions and answers.

Answer 3

Roomba should be disabled:

• if a question is not good, it gets downvoted. If off-topic, it gets closed.
• 1 year is short, I have had dozens of (good) questions at risk, simply because few people noticed the question or were interested (specialized questions)
• it conflicts with the Necromancer badge -> make up your mind.
• downvoters use it to delete questions on purpose
• users are not notified when a question is deleted
• it's a basic ethic, at least for me, to respect content from users unless it is obvious garbage.
• it happened to me many times that a question removed by Roomba got upvoted after I reposted it.
• questions older that 60 days that get deleted cannot even be retrieved by the user (sometimes saved by Wayback Machine, but still, really not cool).
• There is no way I recommend to anyone a website where good content can be deleted. I mostly warn against.
• Some programs are developed after the question is asked.
• Stack Exchange does not offer any way for a user to back up their content (the large SE dump is nice but inconvenient for that purpose, and I'm not even sure it contains images).
• etc.

Yes most reasons are not specific to this Stack Exchange website.