Can we get some consensus on what flag to use for link only answers? [duplicate]

Question

Related: Since moderators are just asking users to flag a custom "Link only answer," can we permanently make this a flag option? (not a dupe, that's a feature request and was closed as a dupe of another one)

This (old) post does indeed say that Link-only answers can be flagged as NAA, but there are a lot of posts like this one which define Not An Answer is a way that it doesn't apply to link-only answers.

Can we get some up-to-date consensus on this? That link only answers are not allowed is well established.

Answer 1

Hmm... Lots of good discussion here already, but to answer the question you actually asked...

NO.

No, you can't have consensus on what flag you should use for "link only answers", because as Tim notes you shouldn't always be flagging them, as George notes there's no "one size fits all" flag reason for them, and as Anna notes they're quickly becoming a mythical beast anyway.

I've written about this before... Twice... But I'll try once more to make this crystal clear:

Flags should describe a problem; "links" are not a problem.

There are other sorts of flags that do describe the sort of problems often indicated by link-heavy answers:

• Shameless self-promotion? Spam!

• Makes no effort to answer the question (perhaps an answer lies at the end of the link; perhaps it does not)? Not an answer

• Links to w3schools? Very Low Quality! Ha ha, just kidding. No, seriously, don't flag those. Edit in a link to better documentation.

• Something else? Describe that in your custom message to the moderator. And by "describe" I mean "in more than three words" - if you're gonna complain about what is essentially an answer that is unhelpfully terse, then it behooves you to not commit the same sin while doing so.

Oh, yeah... And none of this even matters.

So, yeah - the guidance on those two declined flags wasn't terribly helpful. In defense of the mods writing those decline reasons, they at least bothered to type out more than three words. There's a length-limit there too, and face it: mods on SO are busy. This is one of those unfortunate cases where something written in haste ends up exploding and wasting far more time than it would otherwise.

See... Most answers flagged as "link only" are deleted... As are most answers flagged "Not an answer". They're deleted because they're lazy, unhelpful answers. Believe it or not, most of the "link only answer" flags declined are declined because between the time when they were flagged and the flag was handled, the author went back and fleshed out the answer a bit... Often in response to a helpful comment suggesting that he do so. 'magine that...

That's right: the best way to get your flag declined has nothing to do with the actual reason you give for flagging. Wanna make sure your flag stats never take a hit? Make sure you never give the author of the posts you're flagging any indication that their posts are crap and should be improved.

Of course, if you actually give a rat's ass about improving the content on the site, stop stressing over 3-word magic incantations and talk to people.

Answer 2

I have two major problems with link only answers. First - Stack Overflow is supposed to be the site where opening new tabs to finally find your answer stops. Granted, some answers basically refer you to specific documentation that is housed elsewhere, but all answers can at least summarize the linked resource in a way that:

• Someone looking for the information now has what they need. They found their answer on Stack Overflow, and now they have additional reading if they want it. The point is, they didn't have to go any further.

• The answer is still useful even if the link breaks. If it's documentation, summarize the relevant section.

The second issue is link rot. We have quite a few broken links on the site that need to be updated, and this is a tedious thing to ask people to do. In the places where those links constitute most of an answer, this means we have quite a few useless answers on the site.

Stack Overflow is supposed to be the place where you land and know you're done - not the place where you pound your fists on your desk after clicking an upvoted mostly link answer just to realize it's broken. That's like getting to page 19 of replies on a PHPBB forum, finally finding the link for which everyone was replying with 'thanks, this fixed my problem', only to realize it's gone.

This is the workflow I suggest:

• Does the link work? Do something to expand the answer. Suggest an edit, leave a comment, use your votes. If it got through our quality filters, it's probably not flag worthy at this point - use your best judgement.

• Is the link broken? Can you fix it? Great - edit / suggest edit and move on. Otherwise, flag it as not an answer (or, ideally 'other' with a broken link alert), as it's not an answer. It's a sentence with a broken link that needs to be fixed. Until it's fixed, it should not be left around to aggravate people, or prevent someone else from answering a question.

I don't disagree with Anna - sometimes a link, along with some context is just what's needed to answer a question. However, one of our goals from the start was to not frustrate people looking for information even more than they were when they arrived, we need to keep that in mind.

We shouldn't be zapping useful information before it has the opportunity to improve, but we should also in no way suggest that terse answers consisting of little more than a link are something to cherish - at least in my opinion.

Answer 3

I declined the first flag you showed, it was on this answer.

The answer was pointing out the question was a duplicate (and where to find the answer), and there (over time) were nine total flags on that answer, and all of them pointed out that it was 'not an answer'. Yet none of those that flagged the answer did anything about the question.

So, in this particular case, the problem wasn't the answer, it was that the question was a duplicate.

Also, if you argue that you flag link only answers because link-rot, would that link-rot really extend to other Stack Overflow links?

Just some observations around that particular flag.

In the second flag, it was once again against an answer that points out this question had already been asked before (and answered, incidentally).

Yet this time, the question was not closed as a duplicate.

I'm starting to see a pattern.

"Not an answer" flags and answers with only links have traditionally been 'easy pickings' for someone wanting to boost their flag rate. They're rarely declined, and they're easy to find. Look for a short answer, or an answer with a link (and short) and you probably have a good candidate for one. Look for an answer with a question mark in an SEDE query and that can probably help you find some more.

The problem is, we don't need people to flag things that follow a set formula. If they're that prevalent and that's the criteria people use to flag them, then we can automate that process:

• "Answer less than 100 characters containing a link" - Link only answer
• "Answer with Question Mark" - Not an answer
• "Answer containing link to another Stack Overflow question or answer" - Link only Answer, or Not an answer, depending.

I'm glad there are members of the community that want to help us clean up. What we really need help on is the thousands and thousands of questions each day that get asked that probably already have answers, or aren't written well enough to be answered, or even the sock puppet rings that pop up. Those are things that aren't trivial to automate.

Having addressed the specific flags you've asked about, let me directly address your general question:

Different moderators handle it different ways. I personally think Link only answers are answers, they're just not very good answers. I think that before you flag them, you should leave a comment telling the user to improve their answer by editing in salient details from the link.

I also think it's a poor user experience to post a link and just have it summarily deleted without comment. If the thousands of users that flag posts every day seemingly don't have the time to leave a comment before flagging one post, what makes you think the 10 moderators handling 2500 flags a day will have time to leave a comment on each and every one?

It all comes down to what you expect us to do about link only answers.

Do you expect us to delete them? If so: why? We can build a tool that just doesn't let people post short answers containing a link. There's no reason to make that flaggable.

Do you expect us to leave a comment? Again, why? Shouldn't you have done that before you flagged? If you did just leave a comment, then why flag? I'm just going to decline it because the user needs time to act on your advice.

Overall, I understand that this is a contentious issue. You (collectively) want a clean site, and you want it now. I understand that. I want a clean site. But I want a clean site that people want to use. A new user coming in and posting a helpful link is not going to want to stick around if his content is deleted just because it was a link. They especially won't want to stay around if people don't inform them it's a bad practice.

Contrawise, they might stick around if people engage with them or even edit their answer to include the relevant information.

The rule shouldn't be "Flag everything that doesn't meet criteria X", the rule should be: "Engage, and if that doesn't work, flag."

If the community isn't willing to take on that little extra work with its thousands of members, then it's doubly unlikely this site would be successful putting it on the backs of its 10 moderators.

Answer 4

For this to happen, moderators and SE team need to first find out about size of the issue and come to consensus about what to do about it.

• Size of the issue can be estimated using SEDE query Marginal short answers with links.
   
  For example, when run with parameters: AnswerScoreMax=99, AnswerScoreMin=1, AnswerLength=127 it shows about 24000 problematic answers with positive score (for comparison, there are two answers like that at Programmers - that's 2, t-w-o).
   
  Hm expecting active flaggers (500 Marshals / 2500 Deputies at SO) to somehow downvote / comment / edit all these instead of flagging sounds like a wishful thinking to me. Just downvoting these answers would "cost" -24K reputation - anyone willing to "invest"?

One thing worth taking into account is that idea of link-only answers being somehow... not OK is not widely popular. Canonical meta post promoting this attitude has 46K views; that means vast majority of SO users have no idea about it, not to mention supporting it (top voted answer has 262 upvotes - a drop in the ocean).

When an inexperienced SO user looks at (one of few tens thousands) link-only answer with positive score, it would be just silly to expect them to think "oh that's bad, it should be downvoted / expanded". I'll venture a guess that they think it's a reasonable way to answer and gain reputation. Every link-only answer with positive score "flags" (pun intended) its readers that it's OK to answer that way and serves further proliferation of this style of answering.

^{Have to admit, I particularly enjoy suggestions like "Look at the question instead, link-only answer may indicate that question is bad. Close it, close it and leave answer alone". As if next newcomer looking at +5... +10... +20 answer will pay special attention to question being closed, as if they will think like, "oh I shouldn't answer like that, even if it can bring me 5... 10... 20 upvotes". Yeah sure that's just what they will think, give me a break.}

Given amount of problematic posts and generally tolerant attitude of SE audience to these, if (if) Stack Exchange wants to do something substantial against link-only answers, they would better make sure that these are dealt with quickly, uniformly, and with as little effort as possible - just like it currently happens to not-an-answer / spam posts.

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^{From above perspective, a feature of conversion to comments (preferably condensed) looks worth considering. It keeps content of the answer visible to all users, allowing to easier resolve discussions about deletion and it makes it easier for answerer to find, assess, edit and request undeletion when needed.}

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Ironically, the very measures recently introduced to prevent new link-only answers from leaking into the system will probably increase tension around the backlog of old ones. Users equipped with newly acquired knowledge will start noticing problems right where they previously had a blind spot.

• ^{"Hey, this one is like one I recently voted to delete in Low Quality queue for being a link-only answer" (or, "Oh, this is similar to recent answer of mine that has been rejected by quality filter.") "There's got to be a problem here..."}

It would be unreasonable to expect of a recently educated user to carefully dig through obscure details on how such answers would be dealt with in a perfect world. Most likely, they will just throw a "best guess" flag... and get disappointed and left with a bitter taste when it gets declined for a reason that can be understood only by a dozen of MSO regulars.

Answer 5

Note that it's impossible to post a literally link-only answer. The minimum post length requirements ignore URLs. There are cheats and work-around and maybe a few bugs, but for the most part this is a solved problem:

That said, why should they be flagged at all? Link-only answers may be poor answers, but unless the link is completely irrelevant they are answers. They should certainly not be deleted on sight just because they're primarily a link.

Downvote them (and optionally/ideally leave a guiding comment for the author) or edit them to include the relevant information from the link instead.

If somebody is going around spamming an irrelevant link to their blog or product without answering the question, flag that. The "answers" being mostly links is just a symptom in that case.

Answer 6

Very Low Quality.

This answer has severe formatting or content problems. This answer is unlikely to be salvageable through editing, and might need to be removed.

This isn't a perfect fit, as it might be possible to salvage such answers via editing, but it's much better than not an answer.

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The problem is that many if not most of the link-only answers we see are little more than "read this tutorial it tells you everything!" - where the destination site may be one or more of of:

• Not quite related to the question
• Overly broad for the question
• Wrong or dangerous
• Absolutely correct and useful
• 404 Not Found

Most of these are of little use and, I believe, have no place on a site which is supposed to be about answering questions...

Answer 7

So ardently tackled by everyone else involved up to now, I almost feel I should flesh out my thoughts out more thoroughly, but as it stands I don't see much of a real problem here, and so my process goes like this (very straightforward, actually):

1. Downvote;
2. Comment on the post to highlight its deficiency;
3. Flag using "Other" with a message of "Nothing but a URL\NARA";
   1. Optionally adding "Candidate for a comment", if it is.

Takes all of thirty seconds, maximum, and is as clear as day.