What should we do with closed questions about pre-release/beta software after the software has been released?

Question

A user had mentioned to another in the comments of one of the Lion questions that most, if not all, questions about Lion will be re-opened once it is released. This was news to me, although I would like to see where that decision was made.

I don't see re-opening all of the closed Lion questions as being an easy thing to do for all of the obvious reasons: the question may no longer be applicable since things will most likely have changed between the beta and release, and, honestly, who is really going to sit there and comb through all of those questions. I suppose we could ask one of the SE gods to do something in the back-end, but I don't feel that is appropriate for the first reason that things will have changed.

So, what do we do? Cut our losses and just move forward with what we have, or go back and reopen the Lion questions en masse? People are going ask since we have been trumpeting their being off-topic until Lion is released, so I feel as though we ought to settle this now. The same issue is going to apply all pre-release or beta software like iOS 5.

Answer 1

I think the good questions will get asked at the appropriate time (assuming the Apple documentation doesn't make many of the issues clear)

Why risk reopening something that didn't make the cut or was only relevant for a beta version of Lion?

Answer 2

Short Version: I think that, given the high volume of questions that won't be worth reopening, we shouldn't try to reopen them.

If someone really wants an answer to a Lion-specific question (and the question is still relevant), they can re-ask it.

Honestly, of the Lion-related questions I've closed, almost all have been "Will Lion support [x]?" and "Does Lion have [x]?".
Those will be answered for the askers as soon as they install Lion, so they won't want to maintain a question on the site.
And the few questions that are still relevant can be re-asked. No harm there, I think.

Answer 3

Many question closures are a step on the eventual road to deletion.

see:

• http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/04/the-stack-overflow-question-lifecycle/
• http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2009/01/adventures-in-delclusionism/

The primary exception is duplicates where you need the alternately worded alternate as a signpost (and search target) to the other question.

In this case, I think many of these can possibly be deleted...

Answer 4

I flagged a question for a problem I'm having now (July 22, two days post-Lion), asking it to be reopened, and the flag was marked invalid - does it really make more sense for me to post my own question?

That question has over 500 views, so I hardly think I'm alone. Why can't individual questions be reopened on a case-by-case basis?