This question on useful software for DMs was asked back in 2010, and while it was useful then, it's now slightly outdated and much too broad. It could easily be split into several questions.
At the moment, people are voting to close. But could we protect it instead (basically, a banner appears that says it's a historical question but no longer a good fit, and you can't answer or vote any more)? I think the question is still useful, but I agree that it shouldn't be left open.
I don't think an historical lock is called for here.
This historical lock is for widely upvoted, highly valued posts that should be kept around for posterity. This post is neither of those things (14 upvotes is pretty good for what it is, but none of the answers come close to that). It's not something we should be using very often as our history is short and our sense of topicality is not all that evolved from the beginning of this site.
The official guidance on historical locks is as follows:
When is it appropriate to lock a question for historical reasons?
Questions can be historically locked when:
- The post is Off-Topic or Not Constructive, and
- The post is stellar, in spite of its off-topic nature, and
- There are a large number of views, upvotes and inbound links on the post, and
- The post is contentious; i.e. it has been closed and reopened at least once, or deleted and undeleted at least once
This post is definitely the first, and possibly the second (it's well viewed, but its' over 3 years old, and I'm unaware of any inbound links to it). It's not the second though, and this is the first action it's had towards contentiousness.
So we should do one of two things with this question.
We can close it, realize that most of the information there is outdated and move on.
We can close it and ask a couple of narrower questions that would have appropriate answers made up of posts citing the answers there that are still valid.
What we shouldn't do is preserve it as is. That said, a simple close here wouldn't slate this question for deletion (and historical locking it limits its searchability). It won't get caught by the automated cleanup scripts (they don't delete well voted posts), and it would be hard for normal users to delete (we don't have enough people to vote for it). So the only danger here would be mod deletion. And that seems unfounded if the mods are willing to apply an historical lock.
So I say, let it get closed, if there is useful stuff there, let's salvage it, but it's not doing anyone any good if we can't edit it or add current/relevant answers to it.
At the moment, people are voting to close. But could we protect it instead (basically, a banner appears that says it's a historical question but no longer a good fit, and you can't answer or vote any more)? I think the question is still useful, but I agree that it shouldn't be left open.
What does it need protection from? Why would it need to be locked?
You might be operating under a misconception: closing a question is not an indication it's going to get deleted. That question isn't going anywhere. It's going to stay where it is. You will still be able to reference it. The only difference is that it will be closed, which we both seem to agree is appropriate.
You're right it's useful, and that's exactly why it's going to stay. Let me quote the guidance on the deletion feature us 10k+ users unlock:
When should I delete questions?
Closed questions that are of no lasting value whatsoever should be flagged and deleted.
Before voting to delete, please check that there are no good answers; if so, then the question should be flagged for moderator attention as a potential merge candidate. We don't like to lose great answers!
Emphasis not added; that's bolded in the guidance too. Would you say the question is of no lasting value whatsoever? I wouldn't either.
It's safe. Questions only get cleared away if they've been closed for two weeks, and have no answers, and the question is scored 0 or lower. This question doesn't meet those criteria. There's other circumstances, like if a question or answer accrues 6 spam flags, but that's not going to happen either.
Consider that the third question ever asked on this site was closed last year and is still around, and Stack Overflow has a question closed in 2008 which is still around.
In fact, by locking this question we agree is useful, it can no longer be updated as a reward, we can no longer leave comments to request improvement, and we can no longer edit the answers to improve them, such as by keeping them current or updating broken links. Compared to closure, we might agree that locking this is worse!
Can we remove the historical lock on this thing and just let it be closed, since there was nothing wrong with it being closed to begin with?
(Unless, of course, the lock is completely appropriate for another reason, in which case let's leave it as is. But I'm pretty sure this is fine just leaving closed.)
That's called a historical lock, and I have applied it.
