Questions tagged [answer-quality]
The answer-quality tag has no usage guidance.
39
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How to handle "it's impossible" answers?
The question "Java to C++ converter" has attracted some answers, which IMHO are not answers.
This answer and this answer basically say "it's not possible".
I am a software ...
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Answers with broken links to software that is no longer available
Six years ago I asked a question for recommendations for Firefox extensions: Firefox extension to copy the title and URL of the page to the clipboard. Since then, Firefox completely changed the way ...
2
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1
answer
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How to handle one line answers vs comments
When someone posts a comment such as "I haven't tried software XYZ, but it looks like it might meet you requirements", we keep it (unless it's spam). Why? Because it is helpful and is better than ...
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Edit otherwise valid answer to remove "Also, look at that long list of maybe solutions"?
I often see this:
Q: Chat server with feature X? <- valid question
A: I like MyChatX3, a chat server with feature X <- valid answer
Also, look at http:/...
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Should I flag answers that contain multiple, independent solutions?
So some time ago I flagged an answer that contained multiple recommendations within one answer and it was declined, why? Should we continue to allow these types of answers? I know this question What ...
- 7,635
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Quality guidelines for software identification questions/answers?
The top-voted¹ answer to the discussion Is software identification on-topic? says that (some) identification questions should be on-topic.
Because of this, the question Wiki software being used by ...
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Why was this answer deleted?
My answer was deleted and I'm not sure why. The question asked for
"stealth keylogger", where stealth was defined as "does not appear in the Task Manager"
"works well on Windows 10", also windows and ...
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Random inappropriate necro-deletion of decent, helpful, upvoted answer
I posted a quick answer to a question a while ago. I wasn't super detailed and it certainly wasn't a model answer, but I provided a service to the community by being the only one to recommend a ...
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Is suggesting python libraries/solution a proper software recommendations? [duplicate]
Recently I've seen answers, where the OP is asking for a software recommendations, and the answers outlines how to do this in python, and which libraries might come in handy to solve the issue. But, ...
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Are we becoming lax about answer quality?
I'm concerned.
Overall, I think we're doing great. We get more questions per day than all but 8 beta sites, we have awesome users with tons of reputation that help out, and we have a pretty decent ...
- 4,256
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Is suggesting built-in software acceptable?
There are some questions asking for a small set of features that can actually be done with software most users already have installed on their systems.
For instance, one user asked for a tool to ...
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Is source code an acceptable answer?
Please see my exchange of comments with @Bruno Lowagie on this question.
Bruno as provided some source code as an answer. While I, as a fellow programmer, might welcome such an answer, I think I ...
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How we should deal with seemingly easy questions
This question comes from a question that was asked on SR, What's a good education app? Although the question seems just fine to me, this strikes me as a question very likely to attract a lot of low ...
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What is required for a "there is no such program" answer to be high quality?
What is required for an answer to be high quality? does a good job to explain what is expected for answer pointing to a program.
What is required for a "there is no such program" answer to be high ...
- 37.5k
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Providing answers to questions that will obviously be closed
I've noticed a couple of questions recently that obviously were not questions fitting our format (because they are not asking for software recommendations) and thus were later closed/put on hold (all ...
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It is NOT ok to copy and paste from product website
On this question, user3075942 posts 3 answers.
All of the feature lists are direct copy and pastes from the product websites.
As are the screen-shots.
On SW-REC SE, we add value (over a google search)...
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3
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Can we recommend software in comments when our personal knowledge experience isn't enough for a great answer? [duplicate]
On one hand, it seems to be a consensus (one I agree with) that if you can't write a good answer due to not knowing if the software fits ALL requirements because you're not its active user; you should ...
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Overzealous deletion of answers
I recently answered https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/1721/263 with an admittedly too short answer. I received a couple of downvotes and some comments asking me to improve on the answer.
So I ...
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Can we afford deleting not good quality answers?
I really really love your passion but I think you didn't take everything into consideration.
You are stating wonderful rules for achieving a really good quality answers and questions. But they ...
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How can I answer my own recommendation? [duplicate]
As all SE sites, Software Recommendations encourage people to share knowledge in the way of selfanswering questions, which is nice and all, but... how do I objectively answer my own question? I mean, ...
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Should we allow minimal (link-only) 'responses' to questions?
Related discussions:
What is required for an answer to be high quality?
How are we going to moderate answers?
The listed related discussions show that answers should contain more than a link to the ...
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Can I post as many answers as I want?
It seems obvious to me that users should be allowed to post several answers to the same question.
But some might not agree, so I thought I would ask here, just to make sure.
Let's say UserA has ...
- 19.1k
1
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Is the perfect enemy of the good?
I have a general question, which, I think, is well demonstrated in this Q&A (and the comments beneath my answer).
So, the TS has a question about good tool for beginners. Obviously, that's the ...
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Review these link-lacking answers!
I downloaded all of our posts through the API, and I noticed something disturbing: 28 of our answers don't contain links.
Almost all answers here should have a link of some sort - why else would you ...
- 4,256
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The Zen of Software Rec
So a bit of fun,
but also possibly useful.
Many of you would be aware of the Zen of Python
Beautiful is better than ugly.
Explicit is better than implicit.
Simple is better than complex.
Complex is ...
- 2,940
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answer
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People don't think about questions and answers
I have question Android application to learn English for small kids
First answer recommends two wrong applications, not usable for small kids without reading and writing skills, but people are voting ...
- 1,225
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Is it ok to write a better answer with the same recommendation? [duplicate]
In this question I asked for a simple video annotation tool and got an answer by JBaruch with a good recommendation, the program does the trick, but in a not so good answer (at least in my opinion, ...
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How should we treat "Google-able questions"?
As the days on Private Beta are passing by, we have been seeing quite a few questions which might have a proper solution(s) which could be found by just making a simple Google (or whatever search ...
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What is required for an answer to be high quality?
This is the answer edition of What is required for a question to contain "enough information"?
As a continuation of the above, the second key problem that I see Software Recommendations ...
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How to approach answers as software is updated
After reading through some of the questions on Software Recommendations Meta (SRM), most notably:
"You're doing it all wrong!"
"What is required for a question to contain “enough information”?"
I'm ...
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Should we add a second answer with the same recommendation if the first answer is very low quality?
I have just seen this answer Password manager for Linux with just working in-browser autotype Using the tool myself I'm sure I could write a better answer (more detailed, with screenshot...).
So ...
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answers
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How important is personal experience?
How important is my personal experience when I recommend a product?
In the answers I've posted so far, my experience ranges from “I've never used this application before but I'm familiar enough with ...
13
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A call to arms: review these answers!
Answers of this site are of very disparate quality. We have a lot of bad answers; some have already been improved or removed, but others are lingering.
We're in the process of determining what to do ...
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How are we going to moderate answers?
Everyone has already agreed if this site is going to work we need to have really high quality questions and answers (especially the answers).
This leads to the question, how are we going to ...
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What to do about recommendations containing potentially harmful adware?
So, I'm rather surprised this hasn't been discussed already (it hasn't been as far as I can tell). What do we do if an answer to a question recommends a piece of software that, for example, contains ...
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Are answers which provide a complete script acceptable?
Olli has this excellent question which asks for a file integrity checker. I'm sure many of us could write up a quick shell script and cron entry that will do exactly what he needs.
We seem to have ...
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You're doing it all wrong!
Before this proposal went into beta, Tim Post laid out some ground rules on Area 51. If you haven't read them yet, I strongly encourage you to do so. The problem, a lot of you guys aren't following ...
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Private beta: vote, close early, close often, comment, discuss on meta [closed]
While this site is in private beta, every user can vote to close a question. Closing a question takes 5 votes. Every user can also vote to reopen, which again takes 5 votes.
The private beta is the ...
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What to do when an answer contains several suggestions?
The answer to this question (since deleted) gives 4 suggestions as a single answer: (click for full-sized version)
I think suggestion4 is great and suggestion1 is crap, but I can't express it by ...
- 19.1k