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I was trying to post an answer to this question:

a: visited img { display: none; }

But for some reason, my answer was added to the comments section instead. This is what I was trying to post (at least, I think it was formatted like this):

There's nothing wrong with your CSS, but it won't work. This is a [*security feature*][1].


  [1]: https://stackoverflow.com/a/8331950/1679849
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4
  • 3
    Your answers was automatically converted to a comment since it does not suffice for a quality answer.
    – juergen d
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 14:39
  • Wait a minute, that question was answered over two years ago, but still nobody has managed to convert the formatting of links so that they're still legible in the comment section?? Could someone at least fix that?
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:01
  • @squeamishossifrage what do you mean? How the comment looked like before you edited?
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:08
  • Links are formatted differently in the comment and answer sections. Both put square brackets around the anchor text, but in a comment the URL follows directly after inside round brackets. An answer has a number in square brackets that refers to the list of references at the bottom. When an answer is magically converted into a comment, the formatting isn't changed, so it looks like this: [anchor text here][1] [1]: URL goes here
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:20

1 Answer 1

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15

Single line answer with a link.

This was detected as a low quality answer and got automatically converted to a comment.

We expect answers to be more substantive than what you posted.

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  • 3
    What heuristics are you using to automatically determine the quality of answers? If I'd added a paragraph about what I had for lunch today, would that have helped?
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 14:45
  • 5
    @squeamishossifrage - Of course it would help. The answer would get downvoted, you would get lower rep and the answer eventually removed. Seriously though, a link only answer is not acceptable - if there is an answer in the linked document, you can add a summery/excerpt of it so people don't have to leave the site to get their answer.
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 14:49
  • Right, so we already have a human-moderated voting system that works perfectly well. Is this additional mechanism really necessary? Your answer to me contained no links at all — did you not provide one for the same reason?
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 14:57
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    @squeamishossifrage - Yes, it is needed. It educates our users as to our standards. An intervention there and then is much more effective than something happening a while later and out of sight. And why should my answer contain any links at all?
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:01
  • No, it's annoying. If your FAQ contains any information on the subject, it's well hidden. If this really is necessary, at least try to provide a bit more in the way of warnings (how about an icon next to the textarea), and fix the formatting of links so that they appear correctly in the comment section.
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:04
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    @squeamishossifrage - Exactly. It is annoying. So stop doing the thing that is causing you annoyance. The system works.
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:05
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    @squeam worth to mention that it applies only for internal links. If you post one sentence with external link, it won't get auto converted to comment. (But good chance it will be downvoted and deleted via the low quality review which is a manual process)
    – Shadow Wizard
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:10
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    @Oded Sorry to keep banging on about this, but you're doing it wrong. If you must keep this feature, you need to (a) make people aware of it (in advance, not by responding to rants in here), (b) provide sensible feedback like a modal dialog or an alert icon next to the textarea, and (c) do it properly by fixing the formatting of links so that they render correctly in the comments.
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:23
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    @squeamishossifrage - By all means, why not post a feature-request here detailing all of the above? I can't promise we will do it, but if it gets enough positive attention from the community, there are good chances that we will do something about this.
    – Oded
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:25
  • @Oded will do. Disengaging rant mode now.
    – r3mainer
    Commented Nov 19, 2013 at 15:26

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