Timeline for answer to When is a 'Not an answer' answer not a 'Not an answer' answer? by Brad Larson
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Post Revisions
25 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jun 13, 2022 at 22:29 | comment | added | Karl Knechtel | "Where I struggle with things are the couple of accepted answers that you point out where someone says an external resource (that still exists) solved their problem, accepts that answer, and there are no other answers left. " In cases such as this, I don't understand how the question has any value to the site, never mind the answer. Either it's "oops I read the documentation and see where I messed up" (essentially a typo), or "I found a third-party tool to do the job" (seeking the recommendation would be off topic). | |
| Nov 14, 2015 at 16:32 | comment | added | Fattie | BTW you raise good point, it's madness that SO does not include video as it does images. Completely bizarre. All wiki/QA sites for what 15? more? years need of course vid/images/text. | |
| Nov 14, 2015 at 16:31 | comment | added | Fattie | Hi Wai. Regarding videos, it is not 1980. It is as trivial to copy, link, cloud, extract a video as it is text. Click to make a screenshot - whatever. Note that by far the overwhelming thing on the internet .......... is videos (youtube, Netflix, etc). (Note that, like you, I - personally, aesthetically - despise video tutorials versus text tutorials. If you work with say Unity3D, "video tutorial" culture is a curse. But so what .. I despise fast food and think it should be banned. "So what?" Your technical objection is nonsensical today. You may as well say "no damn images!! heh.) | |
| Nov 14, 2015 at 9:49 | comment | added | Wai Ha Lee | ... (continued) I know this has been discussed on meta before - and the consensus was also that video-only answers are not an answer, but unless I'm really desperate I refuse to follow video links because they're linear in nature and can't be scanned anywhere nearly as easily for information. The same applies if I'm reviewing - I might end up watching the video only to find its not even relevant. | |
| Nov 14, 2015 at 9:49 | comment | added | Wai Ha Lee | @JoeBlow - what about the case of videos? If you search for is:answer "this video" there's no end of answers that are simply "this video will help you" or, even worse, "this video should/might/may help". Out of curiosity I followed a few of those links - one answer linked to a 31 minute video... (Continued on next comment)... | |
| Nov 11, 2015 at 23:48 | comment | added | Michael Anderson | @NathanTuggy I agree. The post echos my comment. You can't just blindly copy & paste. You need to attribute and just use a key portion. "Then there's a reasonable chance that the quotation falls under fair use. Crucially, you're not claiming ownership of the text you're quoting." (from meta.stackoverflow.com/a/308786/221955). But I think adding copied content to another user's post is a darker shade of grey - it's not bordering on claiming ownership by yourself, but bordering on claiming ownership by the original poster. True, there's edit history, but that's not obvious to all users. | |
| Nov 11, 2015 at 23:35 | comment | added | Nathan Tuggy | @MichaelAnderson: Word from the top is quotes are fine. | |
| Nov 11, 2015 at 4:22 | comment | added | jpmc26 | @gnat How in the world is deleting an answer with a useful link better than editing in a relevant summary? | |
| Nov 11, 2015 at 4:11 | comment | added | Michael Anderson | @JoeBlow IANAL but simply copying and pasting from some other website is a potential IP violation. You're implicitly covering it with a creative commons license... You might be OK if you carefully and clearly attribute what you've copied and limit it to a small portion of the original. But its something a user should think about, not something to do haphazardly. | |
| Nov 10, 2015 at 6:17 | comment | added | TylerH | @JoeBlow I think adding random sentences from links to link-only answers is not really a substantive improvement on the post. | |
| Nov 10, 2015 at 3:06 | comment | added | Fattie | I don't agree. It's usually very easy to edit it. It takes split-seconds to link to any web page (blog, whatever), and scrape some text from it. It's oneof the primal human abilities these days :) In 90% of cases it's totally trivial. If it's a link to a library like "cloud dot conversions" or something, simply click edit and state "get a library such as cloud dot conversions". Assuming that the idea is to make useful content, you're already 10 million miles ahead of the usual unfortunately valueless "it's better to add content .. etc" comment. | |
| Nov 10, 2015 at 3:02 | comment | added | TylerH | @JoeBlow Usually it's not so easy as to just edit it. I usually see links to entire blog posts or whole websites, or the link is to the download page of a module or library. | |
| Nov 10, 2015 at 3:00 | comment | added | Fattie | I do appreciate that it's something of a shame to delete link-only answers which are helpful, especially in the case when they are the only answer." just click the Edit button and paste in some-any improved answermatter. I bet 75% of the time the answerer in question is a disappearing-transient , so it's irrelevant to try to guide behavior with comments (I bet 74% of the time those comments are never even seen) - so just click edit and quickly paste in something-anything to improve the answer text at hand.Users in the wild inherently know to just carry on to the linked dupe QAs anyway. | |
| Nov 10, 2015 at 2:57 | comment | added | Fattie | "The ideal situation would be for the answer to be edited to include a summary of what solved the problem..." Indeed! I think something people are too timid about editing answers. Say there is an answer that is, blutnly, a pile of crap anyways. Just click the darn ole' "edit" button on the answer. Instead of wasting time typing "You should really include content from that link because .. blah blah", just paste in some content from the link. Most of the time the "answer" anyways is from a Disappearing Transient user; so issues of "managing behavior", etc, are utterly irrelevant. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 21:22 | comment | added | Wai Ha Lee | @rogerdeuce - as has been said, it's not a double standard - I know I've definitely flagged link-only answers of the form "have you looked at this (link) - it may help you"from back in the day which have since been deleted and the flags marked as helpful. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 21:03 | comment | added | Wai Ha Lee | @BradLarson - thanks for taking the time to reply. I do appreciate that it's something of a shame to delete link-only answers which are helpful, especially in the case when they are the only answer. Perhaps in those cases, it'd be better if I'd have commented with the "While this link may answer the question..." to prompt the answerer to take action, then either editing myself if I had the appropriate knowledge (and the link was still alive), or flagging. If nothing else, having these rejected flags has taught me to think more about the consequences of indiscriminate flagging. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 20:08 | comment | added | gnat | "If a link-only answer is accepted, it is especially important to delete it (converting to a comment if the link isn't broken yet)... When a question has an accepted answer, it looks like it has a definitive answer, and there is not much point in looking for a better one... Sure, the accepted answer might have helped the asker, but it's not going to help future visitors, and the community should not be penalized for that answerer or asker's failing..." (quote source) | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 19:52 | comment | added | jpmc26 | +1 for "The ideal situation would be for the answer to be edited to include a summary of what solved the problem." Could you give that statement some more prominence? Maybe a quick TL;DR at the top? | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 18:57 | comment | added | jfs | @rogerdeuce: It is not a double standard. If the answer is useful then it is useful whether it follows some rule or not. Ask yourself: does deleting this answer (as it is) make the internet a better place? No rule is perfect: you have to apply your best judgement for each answer. You may argue that the answer would be better if it had followed the rule -- I can agree here (you could leave a comment suggesting to expand the answer or edit the answer yourself to include the necessary context). | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 16:48 | comment | added | user4103496 | It's great that the site has progressed, where it once allowed bad answers it no longer does. This double standard of old, bad answers being allowed though is discouraging to new users who are trying to make helpful contributions (removing bad content). Shouldn't something be done to bring these answers up to the new standard format, instead of just declining flags from people who haven't been using the site for long periods of time? | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 15:57 | vote | accept | Wai Ha Lee | ||
| Nov 9, 2015 at 15:51 | comment | added | Brad Larson Mod | @AshleyWrench - Comments are for information that adds to a post, and not every answer like this makes sense as a comment. Also, many of the answers being flagged now were left years ago, and the standards for what is acceptable in an answer have changed in that time. I know I left answers that are now regarded as "link-only answers" in my first couple of years on the site, and people didn't have a problem with them at that time. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 15:46 | comment | added | Robert Harvey Mod | @AshleyWrench: Because you need 50 reputation. | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 15:40 | comment | added | Ashley Wrench | Why do people not just put these 'answers' into the comment section of the OP? | |
| Nov 9, 2015 at 15:37 | history | answered | Brad LarsonMod | CC BY-SA 3.0 |