alt Hacker News> I feel bad for the people who dedicated significant time to helping others there.
Why? When they wrote those answers they (presumably) helped the people who asked questions at the time.
The fact that what they wrote won't (necessarily) continue indefinitely into the future doesn't diminish the value they provided in the past.
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I used to spend a significant amount of time on some forums that shut down many years ago. While some of it was technical help, there was also a social aspect to the forum I was on and I spoke with many of those people daily through the forum for over a decade. When it shut down, it left a hole that I've struggled to fill.
Losing a hobby isn't easy. If it was also their way to have a kind of pseudo-social connection, that also isn't easy to lose.
It was presumably a fun part of their life and they won't be able to look at it anymore.
I've written support software for my company (not really in my job description). If somebody makes the decision to throw it all away suddenly, that would be a slap in the face.
Multiply this by thousands of contributors.
Those profiles represent thousands of hours of invested time. Having them deleted from the internet means they've lost all of that accumulated work.
When I answer questions in a public forum, helping the person who asked the question is only about half of the value I expect to get from my contribution.