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Once in a while I come across an old (> 2 yrs, say) unanswered question of the type I cannot build XYZ version u.v.w. where u.v.w. is outdated by today. I guess, chances that someone bothers to answer these questions are next to zero, and personally I would rather have them removed. But closing (the option to vote for I have) means only that they cannot be answered but are still there. So should I leave them as they are?

Addendum: The question can be generalized to questions like this.

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I guess we may as well close them. Closed questions don't count as unanswered so there's no real reason to delete and, anyway, closed questions with no answers get deleted automatically after a while.

I'm not sure what reason we'd use to close them though. Non-reproducible is probably the best choice. We might want to consider adding a new close reason for old questions if we want to take this road.

Let's see if we can reach a consensus.

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    Thanks you, that's the kind of advice I sought. Maybe I should point out my rationale: I was just sifting through unanswered questions with tag c where I noticed that many (if not most) questions should not be tagged with c but rather with system-programming (tag c is fuzzy anyway, but that's a different issue). I was just wondering whether the effort of re-tagging is worth it, especially for such old questions.
    – countermode
    Oct 24, 2016 at 11:10
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    @countermode as a general rule, I feel retagging is always useful, if only to clarify the use of the tag.
    – terdon Mod
    Oct 24, 2016 at 11:27
  • The "Close -> Off topic -> Non-reproducible" description includes the phrase "problem went away on its own". That seems to match the reason so a new close reason isn't necessary.
    – dave
    Nov 7, 2016 at 4:22

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