Introduction
Yesterday I've spent some time reading some articles here about the guidelines: how to recognize good quality answers Q&A and how to handle low quality Q&A.
The first question I had is: what about medium quality?
As you know the world is not black&white (link1, link2). And every science except the mathematic is subjective and subject to interpretation.
This concept is clarified on the guidelines of SE: link
The same article also clarifies the objective of this community and the need for flexibility. I've cited some sentence here: link
When I speak of flexibility many guys tell: "would you like this community to be as Yahoo Answers?". The right answer to this question is: "do you see only black" and "how do you recognize a constructive question?"
I think one useful answer is the one which adds any useful information. See information gain. The guidelines seems to state the same concept.
The question
Let's take the extreme example. If one answer is viewed 200 times and is getting 20 upvotes it means that 200 members see it as useful (otherwise they would have downvoted it), and 20 see it worthing a reward.
Is it a good idea to delete that answer if some moderator thinks (in his personal subjective way and personal interpretation of the guidelines) that the question is not a high quality answer?
the problem is ALL about the interpretation:
- Is one answer following the guidelines?
- Are the guidelines following the objective of SE community?
- Are you interpreting the guidelines well?
If 20 members find one answer useful, answering the question and following the guidelines, and you don't, how can you state you are right and the 20 people are wrong?