Should I not flag a rhetorical question posted as an answer?

Question

I flagged this answer as not an answer. Now, I know that I was wrong because the flag was declined by a moderator. I thought that the answer was a rhetorical question (I believe it is but I could be wrong because English isn't my first language.) but didn't provide proper explanation of why the suggestion was made.

I feel that answers should be followed by a proper explanation. This answer to me looked like a comment. I have noticed in sql, lots of users don't actually provide any explanation at all but simply the queries that OP needs, which I feel is wrong but that's just me. I have done the same mistake few times but now I try to provide some explanation along with my answers.

I would like to know whether I shouldn't flag a post if the answer proves a point to OP's question, even if the answer itself is a rhetorical question. I just want to make sure that I don't repeat the same mistake again.

Could a moderator or someone please explain how I should make the call in the situations similar to the one mentioned above?

Answer 1

In general, asking someone a question (e.g., to get more information about their problem) would not be a good answer. These things should be posted as comments, instead. Therefore, flagging them as "not an answer" is appropriate.

But those are actual questions, not rhetorical questions. The thing about rhetorical questions is that they're just statements masquerading as questions. That means they can easily be rewritten as a statement without changing the meaning.

For example, the answer you linked says:

Why don't you declare 2 variables, assign them in separated selects and then divide?...

I would have edited to rephrase this as:

You should declare 2 variables, assign them in separated selects, and then divide.

That appears to be a concrete, testable solution to the problem, which is exactly what we expect from answers to questions on Stack Overflow.

I assume people sometimes construct their answers with rhetorical questions because they're unsure. Personally, if I'm unsure, I won't post an answer at all—I just leave a comment. But I don't suppose there's anything wrong with posting a suggestion you're not absolutely positive will work as an answer.

Anyway, the reason your flag was declined appears to be just a specific case of the more general principle that you should only raise flags to alert moderators of content that requires their intervention. As I've attempted to demonstrate above, the only thing this post really needed to turn it into an answer is an edit, and that's something anyone can do.

Answer 2

Wouldn't you agree that rhetorical questions can also answer questions, but rather suck as answers, as they are not answers and should be downvoted instead?

Answer 3

If you think the answer lacks enough substance to be helpful I would vote it down. I normally only flag answers that are clearly not answers and have very little hope of becoming one through edits.

The answer you cited seems like an answer to me if you re-word it a little (granted it's not a GREAT answer):

You can you declare 2 variables, assign them in separated selects and then divide.

Answer 4

This example in the What is an acceptable answer? FAQ...

2 Have you fooed the baz?

...is not an answer because

[it is] clearly asking for more information and [doesn't] answer the question.

However this answer...

Why don't you use foo instead of bar?

...isn't clearly asking for more information since rhetorical questions don't ask for more information.

In fact rewriting it this way...

You should foo instead of bar

...doesn't seem to make it better in any real way. In fact it just seems aggressive.

As an example of this aggression is where someone posted an answer like this where the OP was looking to get two counts in one query.

The most straightforward way is just to use 2 queries. There is absolutely no harm in requesting 2 different sets of data using 2 queries yet not a single reason to do it with one.

Perhaps if were asked in a rhetorical fashion it would have taken the bite out of the answer*. But either way I don't think a moderator should delete these and convert to comment.

^{except given who the answer came from I suspect that would have lost its intended effect}

Answer 5

I think there are a few questions that are in fact answers, more so for "easy" questions. Some questions highly depend on the context and it's not always clear what the asker has tried.

For example, a question like:

I'm trying to do X with product Y. How can it be done?

A potential answerer (who may know product Y well) could seek clarification and say:

Did you try to do A/B/C as shown in the third example in the official documentation? (with a link preferably)

This sort of question could be both a question and an answer if the asker isn't aware of that part of the documentation.

I've seen cases where people write this sort of comment and then someone else says more or less the same thing, as a proper answer, and collects the points.

Rhetorical questions can simply reflect that fact that the answer seems obvious to the answerer (but perhaps not so to the asker). (It shouldn't be assumed to be condescending in general.)

Answer 6

lots of users don't actually provide any explanation at all but simply the queries that OP needs

If a query solves the problem, does it always need further explanation? You seem to think that every single user needs their hand held through the basic elements of a query and in a lot of cases I think that is overkill and sometimes offensive. If the user follows up and asks to clarify why such and such syntax was used or what was meant by this or that line, then it requires. I think it's going to be very hard to come up with some objective criteria to determine when a code samples requires zero, some, or a lot of explanation.

In my case, I despise the opposite. A vague recommendation to "use a CTE" that gets accepted:

SQL Server MERGE + Joining other tables

The guy had two separate "answers" to that question, too, which I find infuriating. And in all honesty both answers could and should have been comments. How are other potential answerers supposed to guess that the OP forgot what a CTE is? Great, that helped the OP, but how does it help any future readers? Why should a question like this stay on the site?

Anyway I see this a lot. People with drive-by answers that have some vague reference to a concept, with no explanation and no code sample that shows how to actually implement the thing. Anybody can go look up the syntax diagram on MSDN, but that once again begs the question, why is an answer to "use MERGE" or "use a CTE" a valuable answer?