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Update: The answer in question has been deleted as rude or abusive by members of the community.
Or is "cover your ass no matter what it takes" acceptable here?
Answers advising people not to incriminate or dig themselves into a hole are fine, even when the person might deserve the hole they were going to dig themselves into. That is decidedly not what ...
28
The deletion and undeletion was a mistake from me. I meant to add a mod note to the answer, and instead flagged it. My flagging it as a moderator auto deleted and locked it, which was not my intention as I wanted the community to make the decision to delete it rather than by moderator intervention.
After I accidentally flagged it (it had one existing ...
23
First off: I don't think that particular answer is a good one for the "Don't foo the bar" category and should be down-voted, though not necessarily closed.
Don't foo the bar!
An answer that just says that, is generally not an answer to me, since it does in fact not answer the question.
When is not-an-answer an answer?
When it explains why some ...
21
flags should not be used to indicate technical inaccuracies, or an altogether wrong answer
Well this basically answers your question but I guess you're trying to get at the motivation behind it. There's no one-size-fits-all answer to that from what I've found, though this meta post covers the basics.
Generally put, as moderators we should not judge answers ...
18
I have seen an increase in rudeness on this site over the last year. I have also seen an increase in short-fuse reactions to rudeness -- things that would have just been flagged and otherwise ignored in the past are more likely to garner responses, which garner responses, which turn into prolonged arguments with declining civility, sometimes with ...
17
Yes, they should. That's why people with over 2,000 reputation can make those corrections even if they are only a single character.
The reason that privilege is restricted is because suggested edits need to be approved by other people, increasing the amount of community time it takes to make each one.
Usually if there are enough errors to merit a suggested ...
14
I never voted or flagged this answer, but I find it offensive as well. I don't agree with the first two paragraphs, but those aren't the offensive part. The last paragraph is really what does it for me. The poster is essentially calling the OP "a woman with appropriately low morals that basically forced herself on you for sex". He tells the woman she has low ...
12
Should this site retain the "back it up" principle as articulated in the FAQ material?
No. The first half of the current policy should be removed and the second half elaborated.
I care about the question, "is this answer useful to future readers with similar questions?" The answer is generally no when an answer is "do this." The answer is generally yes ...
12
If I'm voting / flagging a question to close, I don't answer it - in my opinion, doing so can give the impression that the the question is legitimate, which then encourages other people to ask similar off-topic questions. This can be more of a problem on smaller sites (sports.stackexchange.com is where I personally see this, but that's just because it's the ...
12
Is there a way these statements can be interpreted to be enhancing answers and comments? Or are they something to avoid (or substitute with a different reference/analysis)?
Quoting Monica on this answer, emphasis mine:
Mentioning your position and experience is exactly right here. Please keep doing that. If you're answering a question about what ...
11
So, my question is Why?
The answer has a score of -3 and is grayed out, which is a strong indicator to visitors that they shouldn't follow this advice. In fact, the answer adds value to the site precisely because the site is showing it's a wrong answer, similar to tutorials or textbooks sometimes showing what happens if you don't do the correct thing.
10
In my personal opinion, that is not a valid answer. But unless we have clear community consensus on this, don't expect mods to actively delete them. But here are some tools you can use:
Close votes. If the question should be closed, then close it, the sooner the better. That at least stops more answers that may make it harder to reopen the question. ...
9
Is it acceptable here to answer a question with “Go ask someone else?”
No, because you should be voting to close instead. If all you can say is "we can't answer this question" then that's about as clear a sign as you can get that either:
the question doesn't belong on this site, or
the user posting the "answer" doesn't have the right knowledge or ...
9
Stack Exchange guidance
The help center has a good explanation on this subject, too.
I would encourage people to make edits to answers which do this and do not clearly show they are copying content from elsewhere.
For example, consider the following answers:
Answer One
Lots of text blah blah blah.
Another shamelessly copied paragraph.
From ...
9
My opinion is that if you come across a question that you are able to answer, and you are not personally aware of any possible duplicate questions out there, then go ahead and answer the question.
As an answerer, you shouldn't feel obligated to search for duplicates of every question you come upon. That is something the asker should be doing, and to a ...
9
Cross-site duplicate: Are blatantly wrong answers very low quality?
If the answer is wrong, you shouldn't flag it, you should downvote and comment explaining why it's wrong.
Wrong answers can still be useful to the site (as long as they're downvoted and people comment explaining why they're wrong) because they can serve as a warning to others. I recently ...
8
Two Stage Workflow
I like the workflow because it breaks things out into stages. It takes more than one person to make a call to add the post notice, then it takes more than one person to delete, with deletion only being allowed on positively scored posts if the answer had previously been reviewed and left unimproved.
The two stage approach gives answerers ...
8
Explaining the asker why fooing bars in general is a bad idea instead of explaining how to foo bar's might provide value. It might even provide more value than a straight answer, because it prevents someone from making a mistake. But it doesn't answer the question:
The asker might be forced by a higher power to do this, even though they know it's a bad idea....
7
"Ask your manager" may be rather succinct, but in some cases it is perfectly appropriate and correct.
As with all answers, if we don't like the answer we can downvote. If we like it we can upvote. Or you could even add more text to make the answer better.
There's no need to quibble over appropriateness.
7
This is a core feature of the StackExchange network and this behaviour is intentional. In short, it's to eliminate "drive-by users" who might answer questions that have been protected for a good reason. These users will have an association bonus but no actual experience with the site where they're trying to bypass a question's protection. The ...
7
Data we need to collect:
What happens to answers that get this post notice? Possible values: edited and notice removed, edited but insufficient (notice not removed), notice removed sans edit (successfully contested), answer deleted by owner, answer deleted by mod/community after the waiting period, answer deleted by mod/com early. Did I miss any? Or do ...
7
I'm relatively new here, but I feel that for the types of questions asked on Workplace, it's impossible to always have firsthand experience or even a reference that backs up your answer.
I know that my most upvoted answers did not come from direct experience, and most of my workplace knowledge has come to me secondhand. In other words, I've heard a lot of ...
7
To avoid misunderstanding, I realise that feature like this would make it technically harder for me to post an answer. Imagine I am willing to add 20th answer to some question, that would mean I have to pass through checking 19 prior answers before posting my own, go figure.
But, if I really believe that my answer is that important, such difficulties ...
7
The goal of any Stack Exchange site including The Workplace is to provide a high-quality resource for future visitors. Answers provide value in the following three ways:
Answering the question
Explaining why and how it is correct
Providing additional information not covered by other answers
If an answer doesn't match all three criteria, you should downvote,...
7
To me the post seems fine if the following is removed:
with appropriately low morals that basically forced herself on you for sex
That's the part that went over the line. The answerer is directly insulting the OP. The rest seems rather offensive but does not seem to directly insult the OP.
I feel like a delete is 100% justified for as long as it was un-...
7
An answer that fails to actually provide an answer to the question is one reason to downvote - another is when the answer is not a good answer to the question. The whole idea of the voting system is to help the asker choose the best answer.
7
I think this should depend on legality within common law, else you end up with perfectly valid answers being deleted because of one oddball jurisdiction.
Things that are illegal pretty much anywhere (theft, perjury, knowingly making false allegations to police) I believe we should delete all advocation of. Even if it is downvoted to oblivion, there is a ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible