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I think the title speaks for itself. Several times I have come across old questions with some interesting information in answers, sometimes with highly upvoted and/or accepted answers, but by the letter of the help center, they are off-topic.

Not all of these "old" questions are even all that old. Some are only a couple years old. Obviously there are some venerable questions from the earliest days where even the current scope might not yet have been fully refined.

So that brings up the secondary question of whether how old a question is matters in terms of closing or flagging it.

So what should we do in these situations?

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    This has come up many times on many sites. Generally they get a "historical lock" but please see this post on Parenting where a previous mod has disagreed completely with this, so this is worth discussing to make sure we get it right: parenting.meta.stackexchange.com/q/1142/316 – Doktor Mayhem♦ May 2 '17 at 9:03
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    Hmm, I didn't realize that locking took away the ability to flag. That's odd. – user28 May 2 '17 at 18:44
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    What purpose does it serve to close questions that have been inactive for years, If it is not a problem why does it need fixing? – Neil Meyer May 5 '17 at 16:15
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    @NeilMeyer That's a good question. One thing that has happened recently on the meta here is some have asked why their question got closed while these similar older questions remain open. I don't necessarily think the best response to that is to go through and close all old questions that we would now deem off-topic, but I do think the overall situation merits consideration. – Todd Wilcox May 5 '17 at 18:49

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