When are questions and answers archived and what is the criteria for deciding whether to archive them or not.
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6What do you mean with "archived questions"?– samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyzMar 22, 2019 at 10:03
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It means deleting the questions so that space on the server is preserved– subham soniMar 22, 2019 at 10:18
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6I don't think this ever happens.– samcarter_is_at_topanswers.xyzMar 22, 2019 at 10:23
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2 Answers
If by "archived" you meant "deleting the questions so that space on the server is preserved", then the answer is never.
Stack Exchange in general only does soft-deletion; the content is almost never purged from the server/database (i.e. hard-deletion). Deleted posts are only hidden to some users, not necessarily deleted from the server/database. Any users with 10k+ rep and above have an ability to see those deleted posts.
However, some questions are indeed automatically deleted when they meet some criteria (though unrelated to preserving space). The process is called roomba.
Lastly, Stack Exchange does archive the posts, in a sense of making a data dump (again, no posts are deleted in the process). The quarterly data dump can be accessed on Archive.org.
Questions and answers are always available to the public and never archived from view, so everything is always accessible.
If you want an idea of the size of the content, you can take a look at the archived dump. There's actually far more information that is not shared in this way.