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How to batch up multiple id requests to maximize economy and still avoid (400) Bad Request [closed]

closed as noise or pointless by Kevin Montrose♦ Aug 16 at 23:15
This question does not add anything useful; having it present on the site is actively
 harmful because it distracts from other more useful questions.

At the time, the API was killing requests with longer than an undefined path length.

see: URL Length Limit For For Requests Taking Vectorised Ids (/answers/{id}, /questions/{id}, etc)

In the spirit helping people maximize economy of requests while working around this limitation, which has subsequently been relaxed, I took the time to clearly define the problem and provide detailed guidance and code.

When the limitation was relaxed, I updated the post, prominently stating that the problem had been fixed and provided a link to the announcement.

During a recent and, in my opinion, unwarranted, CW spree on my guidance posts, kevin closed the post listed above as 'noise or pointless'.

I think this is completely inaccurate and completely inappropriate and I take offense.

Thoughts?

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1 Answer 1

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It wasn't pointless when it was first posted, and now it is because the problem no longer exists.

Alternatively, it could be deleted but that would remove all rep gained from the question which is incorrect, because rep gained at the time is perfectly legitimate.

About the [dev-tip] questions: all poll style questions (ie. "How would you...?") are getting CW'd in the future as a matter of policy, the [dev-tip] questions were CW'd accordingly. Likewise for code samples that aren't in response to a legitimate question, those should go on a library's posts (which will remain non-wiki, naturally).

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    Seems perfectly reasonable to me.
    – Nathan Osman
    Commented Aug 22, 2010 at 0:12
  • -1 - I disagree, you are essentially saying that any bug or feature-request which enters status-completed should be closed as pointless because the problem no longer exists. This is really ridiculous, it is a well known fact for any professional software developer, that documenting former issues helps to both avoid them in the future as well as identifying possibly related new ones. If anything, this is another indication that the role of Stack Apps should be taken care of, which would imply a related Meta site for these kind of posts.
    – Steffen Opel
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 6:56
  • And to answer one potential argument upfront: while it is true that just closing rather than deleting does retain the information as well, it is well proven that closing is just the first step to increase the likelihood of later deletion due to pass by deletionists enormously, in addition the explanation of the close sends an entire wrong message to readers regarding my main argument above, that having former issues documented is extremely useful and not actively harmful at all!
    – Steffen Opel
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 7:01
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    @Steffen - the post in question was neither bug nor a feature-request, and it never was status-completed accordingly. Your argument is fallacious. Leaving it "live" just encourages people to continuing apply its (now incorrect) advice.
    – Kevin Montrose
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 8:10
  • you know very well that the borders between discussion, support, bug and feature-request are blurred here on Stack Apps due to its unclear focus - the post is addressing a problem with the API and could have been submitted as bug, feature-request or workaround answer to one of these as well. I'm trying to stress the fact, that your argument the problem no longer exists is mood in judging whether to close such questions or not. That aside @code already pointed out that he updated his post after the advice lost its main purpose to encourage people doing it the right way.
    – Steffen Opel
    Commented Aug 23, 2010 at 8:41
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    May I suggest that "useless now does not imply it always was useless" is too subtle for most casual readers and hence a different and more explicit close notice text would be good for posts that have merely lost their usefulness (but had some originally)? Your argument is valid but I can understand Sky's hurt feelings very well.
    – Lutz Prechelt
    Commented Jan 13, 2015 at 9:39

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