Does this question about smartphone apps for LARP combat really need a historical lock?

Question

I just happened across this old question. It's short enough that I might as well quote it in its entirety:

Are there any serious smartphone apps for handling combat in a LARP situation?

I've seen several apps that aren't seriously meant to be used - are there any ones which are meant to be used, and have actually been used by players?

Now, that's pretty vague. As in, I can't really think of anything more deserving of a "too broad" close vote than that.* At the same time, it's also arguably a shopping question, not to mention unclear.

The question also has one answer^† which, despite the broadness of the question, doesn't even actually answer it. All it does is recommend a dice roller app and a wiki, which the answerer's group uses for character stat tracking, but "they do not use them for LARP combat".

Personally, in its current form, I feel that the question is not making the Internet a better place. Basically, it's distracting click bait that contains no useful information on the topic it claims to be about. To become useful, it would need to first be clarified and substantially revised by its author, and then be properly answered in its new and improved form. Or we could just delete it and let someone ask a better question about the use of smartphone apps in (certain types of) LARP combat if they want.

That is, we could do any of those things if the question wasn't locked. But it is. So I can't edit it, I can't comment on it, I can't downvote it and I couldn't answer it even if I wanted to. And I can't even flag it for moderator attention and suggest deletion, because "Historical Significance" locking prevents that too. Hence this meta post.

So, what exactly is supposed to be historically significant about this particular broken window? All I can see is that it's old and has a surprising number of upvotes, presumably because people weren't so clear on what constitutes a good and answerable question here back in 2011. But is that really a good reason to keep it around, and not even allow it to be improved in any way? Or should we just get rid of it?

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^{*) Besides the issues raised in the comments, it doesn't really help that there are so many different ways of simulating combat and modeling injuries in LARPs — from live foam weapon combat with one-hit kill/injury to D&D-like hit point mechanics to rock-paper-scissors to laser tag / nerf guns to "shooter decides if shot hits, target decides injury" to "no serious combat, fisticuffs are OK if both players agree" to "no fighting, period" — and that the OP hasn't specified in any way what background they're coming from or what kind of systems they're interested in, other than that they should be "seriously meant to be used" and not "relatives of RPS". And they can't edit the question to clarify it even if they wanted to, because it's locked.}

^{†) There's another deleted answer, but it's even worse. And deleted.}

Answer 1

The mod team is on board with the arguments people have made here for deleting the question. We've also verified the question is in fact taking up a priority SEO spot despite the app being defunct.

The question has been deleted now.

Answer 2

Tool questions are no longer on-topic

Per this question, tool questions were deemed to be off-topic Are tool recommendation questions on topic?

As such a question about LARP Apps no longer would be a valid question to ask on the site, hence the historical lock.

I agree it should be deleted.

I agree that the question as-is should probably be removed since it has no helpful information and we would not longer allow such a question to be asked on the site.

Answer 3

It can probably go.

After recommendation requests were (re)made off-topic, it was standard operating procedure to close and lock them when they were bumped or otherwise discovered in the course of using the site. We didn’t want old off-topic posts showing up on the front page every time someone corrected a typo, but we also didn’t want to actively go hunt them down. We just waited for the ones that attracted attention to reveal themselves, and made sure that was the last time.

Historical lock is sometimes used more for the lock part than the historical part. Of the lock types, it’s the most “durable” one, in that it’s permanent by default, locks all parts of the page, and it explains that it’s a product of a different era of the site. Also it’s the lock reason closest to being correct; the other lock reasons aren’t accurate at all for these old questions.

Locking as a default also had the advantage that they stayed visible at all, unlike deleted questions, which is good insurance against mods making these close-and-locks in error.

Not all of them really have real “historical significance” though, you’re right!

One like this that gets careful consideration certainly deserves a more custom solution than the default close-and-lock. While a custom treatment might mean unlocking and reopening for some, others like this might instead deserve a proper delete.

So in short, a historical lock doesn’t necessarily mean something earned preservation. If it’s a shopping question, it just means it wasn’t hastily and invisibly deleted.