Responsibility of the questioner and answerer as a criteria for good questions and answers, not quantity of documentation

Question

I started a post earlier with the topic: Listvars does the trick for me is not regarded as an answer The issue is boiling down to a new issue that I felt worthwhile opening a new post for. What is the responsibility of the questioner and answerer. This site wishes to provide good quality answers. But I feel that people are mixing up good quality for good quantity. In the link provided above, some people feel that the reason as to why my answer is not a good one is because it is of low-content. They feel I should have provided extra detail, such as a link to the documentation or describing the command listvars more and how I applied it in my script. That whole debate is revolving around another issue, which is what is being discussed here: What is the responsibility of a questioner and what is the responsibility of an answerer? As such, this post is not a continuation of the above liked post. I provided that as a relevant example of the issue at hand.

The questioner, he is asking for a favor. Asking a favor is not blameworthy, as long as it doesn't exceed the bounds. As such, his expectations should be likewise. His responsibility is to the best of his ability to provide a question that does not cause discomfort to others. Discomfort can be caused by

1. asking something that can be easily retrieved in the documentation.
2. making the question ambiguous.
3. not giving feedback about answers that were given.

Pertaining the answerer, his responsibility is merely to provide a pathway to the successful outcome and resolvence of the question. He is responsible for insight and informing the questioner of something he can't do independently. The moment he did that, he is absolved of his responsibility. Anything over and above that is his goodwill and an extra favor. If he leaves it out, then nothing can be held against him.

For instance in this discussion about listvars, the answerer provided the questioner with correct information. He directed him and now the onus of documentation rests with the questioner. Why? Because it is something he can do himself. Asking for help is always restricted to the point that you can't manage. To ask over and above that is blameworthy. Listvars is clearly not a difficult command that it requires additional explanation to enable the questioner to correctly implement it. The documentation is more than clear enough on the issue. Likewise, a link to the documentation would be a bonus point. But it is not necessary and not a cause to down vote someones post for.

As such, good and bad answers is not about providing a lot of documentation. It is about whether or not you fulfilled your responsibility as an answerer stated above.

UPDATE---

So far the reasons that have been provided are not answering this question. People say that "Listvars does the trick" is not a constructive and helpful way for future users. Or "if you feel that Listvars does the trick is sufficient, then I don't have much to say in response" all of these are not addressing the question. The question is about: What criteria do you use to say whether or not an answer is good or bad? I stated a detailed reason as to why quantity of documentation is not a preferred criteria. I am advocating for judging according to the responsibility of each side, has it been fulfilled or not? But nobody has contradicted my philosophy over here in favor of the superiority of lots of documentation over my criteria presented here. Listvars does the trick was merely an example, don't mix up this issue with that.

Answer 1

At StackOverflow the answerer's responsibility isn't just to the current question asker but to all future question askers that come to the site. As such the answer given should be as complete as possible so that anyone who comes across the answer would be able to understand it. That is the reason all questions and answers can be edited by people with the correct privileges so that the content can be made relevant to any passers by.

It's great that you can provide a one line answer to a question and that is all that the asker needed. But if StackOverflow is going to become the "One Source" that they strive to be then an answer needs to be more detailed than that.

Now if you don't want to provide that level of detail then hopefully you would be fine with your content also being moderated by either editing, voting or removal to better assist all users of the site, both current and future.

Answer 2

You can provide your answer in any form you like, others will judge its value by voting it up or down.

The suggestions you received in your other post are not The Law, they are suggestions to help you post better answers. We are aiming for high-quality content.

The other answer you got to the original question is a good example of an upvote-worthy answer, it's got lots of detail and links to docs and source of examples. It goes beyond the call of just helping the OP (you) solve the problem and provides more useful information so that others may benefit from it.

You are free to answer as you wish, but posting the bare minimum is not going to guarantee that your post is regarded as a good one.

Answer 3

If a question isn't worth writing a good answer for, with code and with an explanation of why the code works, then don't bother answering it. Vote it down. But to say you can toss off half a casual sentence - a single keyword and "works for me" - and expect anyone to treat it as an actual answer? I don't think so.

Questions come along all the time that I can't be bothered to answer. Heck, your "answer" might have made a good comment, and someone who felt like taking the time to write up a good answer could have done so.

This paragraph

Pertaining the answerer, his responsibility is merely to provide a pathway to the successful outcome and resolvence of the question. He is responsible for insight and informing the questioner of something he can't do independently. The moment he did that, he is absolved of his responsibility. Anything over and above that is his goodwill and an extra favor. If he leaves it out, then nothing can be held against him.

is arrant nonsense. You don't have any responsibilities here at Stack Exchange at all. Therefore you can't be absolved of them. What questioners give you is an opportunity. Take it or not as you see fit. It is all done as a gift, and if you don't feel like giving then don't. But don't suggest that tossing off half a sentence should earn you something, or even that the "answer" should not be deleted. It should.

Answer 4

I am advocating it shouldn't get down voted because I did provide a good answer. Yes, I could have done more, but that is just extra. Leaving out something that is extra is not something you can get punished for. If you can, then you have to proof why you can do so. I provided a philosphical basis why you shouldn't.

Your "philosphical[sic] basis" is not relevant. What matters is Stack Overflow's "philosphical[sic] basis".

SO's philosophy is that good answers should stand alone. If you Google for something, and you find the SO page for that question, you shouldn't have to then turn back to Google to figure out how to use the answer. The answer by itself should solve your problem.

Your answer is not a good answer because it cannot stand alone. You said it yourself: "Listvars is a matter of googling". If your answer has to send someone to Google to actually use it, you haven't answered anything. All you've done is give someone another Google search term to use.

That's not a good answer. That's not good content. And therefore, you get downvoted.

Or, to be more explicit:

Pertaining the answerer, his responsibility is merely to provide a pathway to the successful outcome and resolvence of the question.

No it isn't. If we are going to assign "responsibilities" to people on SO, the responsibility of every answer is to answer the question.

A hint does not answer the question. A clue does not answer the question. A "pathway to the successful outcome" does not answer the question.

Only an answer answers the question. That's why the button is called "Post Your Answer", not "Make A Suggestion" or "Provide a Pathway to the Successful Outcome".

One of the dictionary definitions of "answer" is: "a solution to a problem". Your answer was not a solution; at best, it was a guidepost to a solution. Answers aren't guideposts. They're not signs that point you to the information you need; they are the information you need. They're the end of the "pathway to the successful outcome".

Answer 5

I'm going to have a real try at answering what I think you're asking.

My summary of what you're saying

What criteria do you use to say whether or not an answer is good or bad? I am advocating for judging according to the responsibility of each side, has it been fulfilled or not? But nobody has contradicted my philosophy over here in favor of the superiority of lots of documentation over my criteria presented here. None of those answers are telling me why not providing documentation makes me worthy of being punished by being voted down.

You liked that Wesley Murch pointed you to How do I write a good answer to a question

All of those reasons that are stated over there, what is the philosophical basis for them? In other words, summarize all the different reasons mentioned in a few fundamental laws. If you did that, then you are talking about my topic.

The philosophical basis for voting on Stack Exchange: democracy

Stack Exchange was founded to replace help forums where you have to read through a great deal of discussion to find (or not find) an answer to the question someone asked. Such forums suffer from topic drift "yeah I had that, but now it's going wrong this other way, so....", noise "me too - has anyone found an answer?", untested answers "have you tried ....?", etc, and can be very frustrating.

The idea on Stack Exchange is that the answers and the questions are kept separate, and the best answers get voted up to the top, so that the most helpful advice is the first thing you read. Lengthy comment discussions under the questions get shrunk into a hyperlink to make the best answer quicker to find.

The key philosophy is that democracy is the best way to decide what the best answer is. Every registered user has two buttons they can use once on each answer so that the best answers gets voted up and the worst answers get voted down.

This relates to the answers to How do I write a good answer to a question as an underpinning principle in that the top two answers to that question are written by people with a lot of experience getting the upvotes other users have chosen to give.

How this relates to your philosophy of voting

The key idea on Stack Exchange is that the opinion of many people is the best way to judge quality, and that their freedom to vote how they choose is the mechanism by which this occurs.

You're free to vote on the basis of solved-the-problem, other people are free to vote on the basis of clarity-of-explanation, other people are free to vote on the basis of quantity-of-documentation.

It turns out that a lot of people feel that a very short answer that just gives you something to google isn't a good answer, so those sorts of answers are downvoted and sometimes even deleted.

(Deleting an answer hides it from everyone except users with a lot of reputation points, disallows any voting or commenting, and restores reputation score to where it would have been if the answer wasn't there. This stops the negative effect it was having on the reputation score of the answerer.)

Why I think you're finding all this so hard

I feel that people should express their votes as long as it is academical, not emotional. I feel that people are being overly emotional over here.

Emotion and downvotes
You've made a lot of assumptions about why downvotes occur (and I think you're looking too deeply), but I think that the person most emotional about this is you. You referred to being "punished with downvotes". Downvotes aren't punishments, because they're about the answer, not about you.

Also downvotes don't, in the end, matter. There's just some numbers on a page. Try not to take it personally.

Other people's voting decisions
Give up trying to argue that people should vote in line with one particular philosophy. People should vote in line with their opinion. They should use their judgement to say whether an answer is good or bad.

Rights and responsibilities
That's awfully strong language for a website that you're free to use or not use.

In particular, the argument that because an answerer fulfilled responsibilities they have the right to formal appeal against downvotes is based on an incorrect assumption that there are rules about the criteria people use to vote, and that the people in charge would want to use voting reason rules to overrule the democratic system they deliberately chose to put in place.

There aren't vote reason rules, and the people in charge choose the community as the decision-making body on answer quality.

Democracy
With democracy as the principle, if you're getting downvoted, change what you're doing to encourage upvotes. People gave you this advice; democracy is the principle underlying it.