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It frustrates me how often I run into threads like Proper use cases for Android UserManager.isUserAGoat()? which have more deleted posts than non-deleted posts. In this case, some of them are perfectly coherent and provide information that was not provided by any other posts when they were deleted.
How can we encourage people to downvote rather than delete when they just don't like an answer or think it's completely optimal?
If you can point me to any of those answers that have been deleted that are actual answers, then I'll be happy to undelete them.
The question is What are the proper use cases for Android UserManager.isUserAGoat()?
This is important because it's not asking whether or not it's an easter egg, or what the possible reasons for its inclusion are; or for everyone to include a picture of a goat in their answer.
I admit that the question has the potential to be like the perma-deleted Boat programming question, in that it could be a clever troll, but as stated, there is a discernible question there that can be answered.
We don't hate fun, but we do expect answers to answer the question asked, and not become some forum where anything goes.
The community and the moderators did the exact right thing here. There's nothing to 'encourage' here; the answers were deleted not because they weren't optimal, or the users "didn't like them"; they were deleted because they were not answers. You may be confused about the role of deletion and downvoting:
Downvoting is for when an answer is wrong or not well thought out.
Deletion is for when an answer does not address the question asked, is irrelevant to the topic, is spam, a comment, or a question. This is not an exhaustive list of reasons to delete.
We don't delete answers because they're incorrect, we delete them because they don't address the question, or are comments, or appear to be monkeys hitting keys.
I would support a feature request that required users to give a reason for deleting a post (much like we have close reasons), and have that reason displayed under the names of the users who voted to delete it. That way deletion would require reasons much like close votes would. Hopefully it would allow for people to improve their posts and flag them for undeletion.
I have made this a feature request.
Regarding down-voting and deletion: they each have their place, and on an ordinary question there's not too much to worry about - some folks down-vote, some folks vote to delete, and some folks do both; what actually ends up getting deleted vs. just down-voted usually boils down to the effort put into the answer. But on super-popular questions that bring in a lot of gawkers with at best tangential interest in the topic, that tends to fall apart. We're not reddit - the ranking algorithms are not optimized for long threads of tangential comments.
This is the second time that question's come up in a couple of days. Here's why: it wasn't locked.
Usually, when a question gains that much attention in a short period of time, it's necessary to lock it: thousands of people show up who aren't familiar with the structure of Stack Overflow, start posting their feelings as answers, and things start looking pretty raggedy. Locking gives things a chance to settle down without removing the good stuff that brought folks in in the first place.
The moderators yesterday opted to take a more hands-off approach: leave the question unlocked, welcome new answers, and only step in to remove things that... well, clearly were not answers. Jokes, discussions, trivia, etc.
This did end up encouraging a few people to improve their answers significantly. But it also seems to have created more drama. Given that the question is quite effectively answered at this point (how many uses can you come up with for a function that always returns false?), I've locked it for the next day.
Answers can still be edited and commented on, but no new ones can be added and the question will stay as it is.
"Rules of the game" have been set just few hours after the question has been asked.
Post notice in the question says clearly and unambiguously:
We're looking for long answers that provide some explanation and context. Don't just give a one-line answer: please explain why you're recommending it as a solution. Answers that don't explain anything will be deleted...
As long as deleted are answers covered by above notice, I would find removal fair.
Without above notice, I would rather prefer downvoting bad answers instead of their removal. I downvote quite frequently and rep points I loose for doing this feel like an "investment" into site quality; pretty rewarding. But wasting reputation on those who just can't play by rules... give me a break.
These answers should have been dealt with by the community through voting. The system works just fine, there is no need for such a heavy handed response by the moderators.
We need to educate people to not flag everything they see and instead use their voting abilities to moderate the site. People need to stop involving moderators in things since the moderators are clearly out of control.
There are two great studies that delve into some of the root causes behind these issues:
