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There is an odd question on the main site:

The question is no longer required to fulfill its purpose as stated in the body.†

Perhaps it ought to be deleted outright.

As it is locked, one cannot even flag it for moderator attention and only moderators can do anything with that question.

*Yes, I did not follow that question's clear titular instruction.
†I bet you're curious what that purpose is. To find out all you have to do is disobey a simple directive.

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  • $\begingroup$ closed after less than a minute! $\endgroup$
    – Gerald Edgar
    Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 13:01
  • $\begingroup$ To those with reputation of 10k or more, up until question no. 12, we should ignore the questions. But only 1 is not deleted! $\endgroup$
    – Asaf Karagila Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 14:19
  • $\begingroup$ I love that it looks like it took 4 years to realize that it's not a good, on-topic question for this site and shouldn't be used as evidence that one can ask similar questions here. $\endgroup$
    – Janne Kokkala
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 10:58
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    $\begingroup$ I decided not to disobey - it is more interesting this way $\endgroup$
    – მამუკა ჯიბლაძე
    Commented Sep 2, 2015 at 16:03

1 Answer 1

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It might seem useless, but it is question number 1. We should not deleted it. Who knows what would happen? Maybe all other questions start to trickle through the hole this creates.

More seriously, my understanding was it actually is kept for historical/sentimental reasons; several subsequent questions serving the same purpose got deleted.

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    $\begingroup$ More precisely, it serves to record the precise time when MathOverflow was born! (One could argue for different technical definitions of "birth" here, but the first post is a very reasonable one.) $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 14:40
  • $\begingroup$ @FrançoisG.Dorais: Wouldn't then something like "First question" be a better title than "Ignore this question"? $\endgroup$
    – Stefan Kohl Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 21:19
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    $\begingroup$ @StefanKohl The usual tradition is to preserve historical records as they were, to the extent possible. $\endgroup$
    – François G. Dorais Mod
    Commented Aug 30, 2015 at 21:23

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