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I got a downvote recently on my answer to this question which was asked in 2011. I replied in late 2015 and someone edited the question down to one line a couple weeks later. What's up with that? If the question was there for 4 years and got lots of Answers, how can you just sweep in and "improve" it much later? A lot of the context for the many, many answers (and comments) was completely lost! Whose idea was that???

I have to protest that you should not try to make the past better by pulling the rug out from under everyone who contributed. I don't care about the downvote, but it alerted me to this situation. I have seen this happen on other sites (like Christianity): questions that were Open and had some good responses for years were recently closed as being "Too Broad", "Off Topic" etc. Why the sudden change of heart? Was the past really so bad that you have to redact most of it?

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  • I'm mostly an infrequent lurker on this stack, but from what I can tell from that specific question's history: the post in its original, lengthy, form, was closed as unclear. Then it was edited to 1 line in an attempt to distill it to its essence. Then it was reopened. All of that happened in 2011, so if you answered in 2015, you only ever saw, and only could have responded to, the short 1-line version. Then, later in 2015, presumably after you answered, the title, and only the title, was edited for clarity. The meat of the question didn't change at any time after your answer.
    – Dan Bron
    Mar 15, 2016 at 13:21
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    Ok, and I just went and read your answer, and since you mention zebras and tigers but not apples and potatoes, for sure you were responding to the "new", short, version of the question. You never saw the original. Nothing was changed about the question which "invalidated" your answer. If this Meta-post was motivated by the downvote you received, I can tell you the reason was with certainty not that the question was changed to invalidate your answer. I can't speak for the downvoter, but "silly" answers, as you put it, are often downvoted on SE, even to "silly" questions.
    – Dan Bron
    Mar 15, 2016 at 13:22
  • @DanBron Ask a silly person, get a silly answer. Doesn't that follow from Aristotle? Why would the site differ from this fundamental principle of reason? Sounds questionable to me. Anyway, lots of other comments and questions were without support due to the edit.
    – user16869
    Mar 16, 2016 at 12:54
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    That question is half a decade old, and no one, no asker, no answerer, and no reader, has complained about since, until you did, after trying to offer a low-effort and silly answer, and were consequently penalized. Whatever arguments needed to be had about it, were had about it 5 years ago. Bottom line: you got one downvote, suck it up and move on. And before you think to ask: no, I wasn't the downvoter. I've never had enough rep on Phil.se to downvote anything.
    – Dan Bron
    Mar 16, 2016 at 12:58
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    (Putting it another way, if you consider your answer appropriate to the question, and therefore the downvote unjustified, then tell yourself the downvote is just silly, and assuage yourself by extending your Aristotlean logic: ask a silly question, give a silly answer, get a silly vote.)
    – Dan Bron
    Mar 16, 2016 at 13:05

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