I am reluctant to agree with the aforementioned policy because I do not want to lose the comments on such posts. There have been cases where a ‘<= 0’ post has been flawed but the replies have provided worthwhile insight into the topic being covered. I often search for things I can remember reading months in the past and it would frustrate me if they were not there to be found.
I like the sound of the (unfortunately code requiring) idea of having them not visible in the side bar.
If there’s a link to it from somewhere, Google ought to index it and keep it indexed. A quick google returned a discussion suggesting that orphan pages with no incoming links will eventually be de-indexed (assuming the bot had the time to index them before they got orphaned), though it might take a long time. It’s from 2004, though, and Google has revamped their systems plenty of times afterwards.
I am reluctant to agree with the aforementioned policy because I do not want to lose the comments on such posts. There have been cases where a ‘<= 0’ post has been flawed but the replies have provided worthwhile insight into the topic being covered. I often search for things I can remember reading months in the past and it would frustrate me if they were not there to be found.
I like the sound of the (unfortunately code requiring) idea of having them not visible in the side bar.
The mechanism I have for post removal wouldn’t prevent the comments from being visible if you knew the old link.
Would search still work? (I assume it probably would...)
I don’t know. I too assume it probably would.
If there’s a link to it from somewhere, Google ought to index it and keep it indexed. A quick google returned a discussion suggesting that orphan pages with no incoming links will eventually be de-indexed (assuming the bot had the time to index them before they got orphaned), though it might take a long time. It’s from 2004, though, and Google has revamped their systems plenty of times afterwards.