Make it easier for people to remove bad and incorrect answers. Some possibilities for discussion:

1. Make downvotes on answers free to the caster.

I think that this will have a big impact on quality, as I am sure many people are reluctant to hit that down arrow because of the -1.

"What!" I hear you say, "people are reluctant to lose one point of reputation when they see something bad?!?!. That's just crazy". It may be crazy but I fear it's true, especially for low rep users who are struggling to reach the next privilege threshold.

This results in:

1. Poor quality answers being left on the system with no indication to say that they are poor quality.
2. Users flagging for moderators to delete stuff because they can't do it themselves as the post is not negatively scoring.

All-in-all not useful. A word of warning though - if down-votes are free it becomes easier for people to down-vote all the competing answers on a question. We'd need to have a way of spotting that and either preventing it (the -1 remains if you've answered the question, or add an answer later), reversing it automatically or flagging it up to the moderators.

2. Educate users more to remind them that they'll get their precious 1 point of rep back when the offending answer is deleted.
3. Allow delete votes on positively scoring answers - obviously we need to scale the delete votes along the same lines as question delete votes are scaled so that it's next to impossible to delete something that's highly upvoted. If a bad answer that's got a couple of upvotes starts to attract delete votes then it might prompt the OP to fix it up, others to fix it up or add a new answer themselves. Obviously delete votes should age away, perhaps more rapidly if the post has been edited since the vote was cast.

If the community. properly peer reviewed, can do the cleanup there's less work for the janitors to do.

Make it easier for people to remove bad and incorrect answers. Some possibilities for discussion:

1. Allow delete votes on positively scoring answers - obviously we need to scale the delete votes along the same lines as question delete votes are scaled so that it's next to impossible to delete something that's highly upvoted. If a bad answer that's got a couple of upvotes starts to attract delete votes then it might prompt the OP to fix it up, others to fix it up or add a new answer themselves. Obviously delete votes should age away, perhaps more rapidly if the post has been edited since the vote was cast.
2. Educate users more to remind them that they'll get their precious 1 point of rep back when the offending answer is deleted.
3. Make downvotes on answers free to the caster - or perhaps at least after a certain reputation level/length of time on the site.

I think that this will have a big impact on quality, as I am sure many people are reluctant to hit that down arrow because of the -1.

"What!" I hear you say, "people are reluctant to lose one point of reputation when they see something bad?!?!. That's just crazy". It may be crazy but I fear it's true, especially for low rep users who are struggling to reach the next privilege threshold.

This results in:

1. Poor quality answers being left on the system with no indication to say that they are poor quality.
2. Users flagging for moderators to delete stuff because they can't do it themselves as the post is not negatively scoring.

All-in-all not useful. A word of warning though - if down-votes are free it becomes easier for people to down-vote all the competing answers on a question. We'd need to have a way of spotting that and either preventing it (the -1 remains if you've answered the question, or add an answer later), reversing it automatically or flagging it up to the moderators.

If the community. properly peer reviewed, can do the cleanup there's less work for the janitors to do.

Make it easier for people to remove bad and incorrect answers. Some possibilities for discussion:

1. Make downvotes on answers free to the caster.

I think that this will have a big impact on quality, as I am sure many people are reluctant to hit that down arrow because of the -1.

"What!" I hear you say, "people are reluctant to lose one point of reputation when they see something bad?!?!. That's just crazy". It may be crazy but I fear it's true, especially for low rep users who are struggling to reach the next privilege threshold.

This results in:

1. Poor quality answers being left on the system with no indication to say that they are poor quality.
2. Users flagging for moderators to delete stuff because they can't do it themselves as the post is not negatively scoring.

All-in-all not useful

2. Educate users more to remind them that they'll get their precious 1 point of rep back when the offending answer is deleted.
3. Allow delete votes on positively scoring answers - obviously we need to scale the delete votes along the same lines as question delete votes are scaled so that it's next to impossible to delete something that's highly upvoted. If a bad answer that's got a couple of upvotes starts to attract delete votes then it might prompt the OP to fix it up, others to fix it up or add a new answer themselves. Obviously delete votes should age away, perhaps more rapidly if the post has been edited since the vote was cast.

If the community. properly peer reviewed, can do the cleanup there's less work for the janitors to do.

Make it easier for people to remove bad and incorrect answers. Some possibilities for discussion:

1. Make downvotes on answers free to the caster.

I think that this will have a big impact on quality, as I am sure many people are reluctant to hit that down arrow because of the -1.

"What!" I hear you say, "people are reluctant to lose one point of reputation when they see something bad?!?!. That's just crazy". It may be crazy but I fear it's true, especially for low rep users who are struggling to reach the next privilege threshold.

This results in:

1. Poor quality answers being left on the system with no indication to say that they are poor quality.
2. Users flagging for moderators to delete stuff because they can't do it themselves as the post is not negatively scoring.

All-in-all not useful. A word of warning though - if down-votes are free it becomes easier for people to down-vote all the competing answers on a question. We'd need to have a way of spotting that and either preventing it (the -1 remains if you've answered the question, or add an answer later), reversing it automatically or flagging it up to the moderators.

2. Educate users more to remind them that they'll get their precious 1 point of rep back when the offending answer is deleted.
3. Allow delete votes on positively scoring answers - obviously we need to scale the delete votes along the same lines as question delete votes are scaled so that it's next to impossible to delete something that's highly upvoted. If a bad answer that's got a couple of upvotes starts to attract delete votes then it might prompt the OP to fix it up, others to fix it up or add a new answer themselves. Obviously delete votes should age away, perhaps more rapidly if the post has been edited since the vote was cast.

If the community. properly peer reviewed, can do the cleanup there's less work for the janitors to do.