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Comment by castis | Hacker News Reader

There are valid reasons that the question was closed. Those reasons are known and expected to be enforced.

I'm not really one of those who criticizes SO that much. They can do what they want on their own website.

I'm just perplexed by the trend over all, especially with Wikipedia, for people to act like the internet is a library and shelf space is running out. Why would a site owner limit their user's contributions in any way except to conform to the law, and prevent trolling, spam, etc? Who knows how much value the next answer might have provided readers if they hadn't closed it down?

It's not that anyone believes "shelf space is running out." It's signal to noise -- or, to be less judgmental, "findability." Sure, SO or Wikipedia have the storage capacity for people to post anything they wanted anywhere on the site, but that would make much more work for users to find the content they need -- they'd have to trawl through a much bigger mass of semi-relevant or irrelevant stuff.

This is not to say SO or Wikipedia has the balance right; but it's a sensible reason to "limit their users' contributions."

While space is not running out and SO could keep everything this is SO's advantage. They don't. they reject the chaff because it is clutter. you go to SO links because you know your odds are good that if a question is answered there one scroll wheel away is the real answer. Not 10 pages of forum away. Letting everything stay is like adding pages to forum posts. all noise.

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