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Timeline for answer to Is an answer that says that other answers are wrong not an answer? by Peter - Reinstate Monica

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Nov 23, 2020 at 9:26 comment added NoDataDumpNoContribution I think answers should effectively contain solutions, otherwise they aren't answers. Simply dealing with the subject of the question is not enough. Even comments can deal with the subject of the question but may not be a solution. This should indeed have been a comment.
Nov 22, 2020 at 13:06 comment added Peter - Reinstate Monica @Braiam More concretely: "commenting on [here: refuting] the correctness of other answers" certainly is part of the the process to "answer the question". If you can refute all possible solution attempts it is a complete answer; if you can only refute some, it's a partial answer.
Nov 22, 2020 at 13:03 comment added Peter - Reinstate Monica @Braiam I think you understand "to answer" as "to provide a solution". The OP is under the same semantic haze. You can (partially) answer a question without providing a solution! Ideally in that case, you'd prove that there is none, or provide one, but both may be hard; it is certainly a partial answer to refute some erroneous attempts at a solution. There is a similar well-known and recently oft-criticized positive result bias in academic publishing: Failed attempts, although they would be valuable contributions to science, are too often not published.
Nov 22, 2020 at 12:05 comment added Braiam This is incorrect, the help page says "answer the question", this is commenting on the correctness of other answers.
Nov 22, 2020 at 10:48 history edited Cody GrayMod CC BY-SA 4.0
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Nov 22, 2020 at 10:29 history answered Peter - Reinstate Monica CC BY-SA 4.0