TL;DR I intend to remove answers I don't think are adding value or answers that are suggesting legally or morally dangerous things. Not just because they are downvoted. I'm doing it on a case by case basis
This site as a whole has some absolutely fantastic questions and answers and some of the users we have are able to provide phenomenal support for a wide range of topics, as a whole the tone of the community here is very good and seems to be slowly improving!
However, we are not without our baggage, we do have a number of answers that may be best to remove.
Tell-tale signs
The tell tale signs of our current 'bad' answers are that they are quite old, a month or two at least, highly down voted, and have usually incited discussion in their comments just because they are sowing discontent in the community.
Don't confuse these with good, value adding answers that have been down-voted though. The plan is to remove those that don't add value, not those that are just disagreeable.
Also included in this will be those answers that seem to offer dangerous advice that could land the asker in serious trouble either legally or morally.
For example, if I select by answers, order by votes, and look at the very last page we have a good place to begin investigation.
My Plan
I plan to be working backwards through these, gradually getting towards the more positively scored answers. I will be trying to do something about every single one of these answers in a push to improve the quality of our answers as a whole.
My efforts will either result in flagging, voting to delete, or leaving a comment where I think the answers are salvageable.
How you can help
For those of you with 4k reputation at least you are welcome to join me and help in a few ways.
- Hopping on the last pages and working backwards like I am
- Going to the review page and checking the delete tool to either agree or disagree with my deletions.
For those of you who do not have the 4k rep you can still help by working forwards rather than backwards. These will be the less down-voted answers that may still be salvageable with an edit, or a polite comment to the original poster.
For answers that I think are on the edge I may bring to meta for discussion, if you wish to help then please do the same and avoid discussions in the comments, either taking them to chat or to meta.
Thankyou in advance,