Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?

Question

I think we can all agree, this sucks:

If you've been around a little while, you've probably encountered hundreds of answers like this in various forums, some of them even marked as "The Answer" by well-meaning¹ forum admins looking to close a thread. We could try to enumerate the commonly-observed problems with it...

1. Link is probably broken
2. If link isn't broken, it's spam
3. If link isn't spam, it's to some broadly-related resource that the answerer found by pressing "I'm feeling lucky" when googling the question's title.

...but the real issue here is that we don't know! Even if the link was originally pointing directly to the most awesomest answer ever for exactly the question being asked, there's nothing in the answer itself to even hint at what direction we're being pointed in. Strip the markup, and this is what you're left with:

i think you should take The tutorial HERE! This will help you a lot

Is there even one tiny speck of information there? No. Even the title of the page being linked to would have provided something to go on, but that was entirely too much work.

So let me be clear: this sort of response is not an answer. If you see this, flag it. Moderators, if you see it flagged, delete it. There's really only one valid exception to this rule, and that's when the question is:

Suggest me some tutorials where i can learn quick.

Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad answer - but when the question is kinda asking for bad answers this is to be expected. Close or flag the question and move on - this is much more efficient than hanging around to babysit it by deleting every crap answer that inevitably shows up.

If you're still reading, you're probably getting really bored by now. "Gee, Shog - answers that contain ZERO information are terrible, horrible, very-bad things? What shocking revelations will you share next?"

Yeah. It's really simple... Except, folks keep getting it wrong and then arguing about it. See, the problem is that once you step away from black-and-white "answers / doesn't answer" decision-making, things get... Interesting.

And all those other answers with links in them

See, this is an answer:

And so is this:

Yes, they're both very short, and yes, they contain links. But strip the markup, and you still get at least a little bit of useful information. Does that mean these answers should forever hang around the site? No, not necessarily - if it turns out they're just not that useful, they should probably still be removed - or at very least, down-voted so that they rank below other answers.

Just remember: if the text of the post contains an honest attempt at answering the question, then it is an answer - so don't flag it otherwise, and if you do, don't complain if your flag gets declined.

Answers & Apples

If you're still confused, forget about answers. Think about apples instead:

Answers are just like that, but less tasty in pies.

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^{1 By which I mean to say, "criminally lazy"}

Answer 1

I don't totally agree on your statement that a single sentence with a link to another resource is an answer in most cases. When the questions are lacking any effort I agree this could be a decent answer, but probably it is better to close the question anyway.

In my opinion an answer must qualify to the same rule as questions do:

Answers need to have sufficient information to understand the answer. The answer should be described in a reasonable level of detail and / or include a minimal example of the answer.

To explain myself a little further.

When an answer says:

You probably want a FileOutputStream [LINK]

I don't think that is an answer. It still needs to make clear HOW the FileOutputStream could be applied in the solution.

Answer 2

Strip the markup

We could experiment with disabling link markup and hiding clickable URLs in new answers during the 5-minute grace period, then enabling them again after the grace period (to prevent ninja edits and whatnot from circumventing that).

If in the first 5 minutes you cannot tell the gist of an answer because there are no functioning links or clickable URLs, then it's most probably a link-only answer. If it still won't get edited past the 5-minute grace period, there's no reason to let it stay.

It sounds like a strange idea on paper which might translate into horrible UX for the answerer, but I think misidentification of link-only answers and non-answers is the least of our moderation problems... in any case, I'm just thinking aloud here.

Meanwhile, I'm going to continue using "I refuse to click your link" as an excuse when commenting on link-only answers.

Answer 3

The answer to your question is Yes and No.

The examples you supplied, are clearly not an appropriate or complete answer (noting the one that got up-voted as well).

Generally, links are for reference, and Answers are for Solutions. If an Answer only contains a reference, then I would not consider that as a Solution except in certain cases (example Q/A below, which would be valid in my opinion)

Some cases do not require a lot of explanation, and a link would suffice provided that link is RELIABLE. However your points about spam and malicious links are valid. Additionally, links expire, sites go down, pages get moved, and so forth which all affect the quality of the response.

A good example of a valid link with a short response to a question may be something like :

Q: Where do I go to sign up for an S3 API account on Amazon ?

A: To sign up for an S3 API account on Amazon, go [link here]

To help minimize this issue from the posting side, try and phrase your questions so they don't encourage responses with links only, or state in the question that you wish for the complete solution to be self-contained in the Answer post, and that answers that are not in this form will not be accepted.

My suggestion to help minimize this issue would be as follows (from SO admin side) :

1. Disallow links in WYSIWYG unless they are properly referenced using the UI.
2. When adding a link with the UI, force additional information to be added with it (Title, Long description + Code, etc)
3. On save, SO should check the link against Short URL services, and then against a malicious site filter (similar to AdBlock), and if something found, flag the user for spam, and hide their answer for moderation.
4. Before database insert, check if link is alive, and download a page preview (like Facebook, and other services do), and attach that with the URL.
5. Lastly, for inactive threads, on first browse after so much time has elapsed, run the links through those checks again (#3, and #4)

I have implemented this mechanism on several clients WordPress sites and it works like a charm. No more spam, but open threads. Link posts show the user what the link is going to, and posts are automatically kept hidden and flagged for admin if a someone goes through those steps with a spam/viral/malicious link.

Having this implemented is really not that complex (code-wise), however I think there are a lot of politics involved for something like that to be implemented on SO. (like, this post would probably require at least a million upvotes)