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Let, "Answer Ratio" = AR

  • Answers are deleted due to lack of sources & low quality. Are those counted in the AR, which has to be minimum 2.5 as per the area 51?
  • Do votes to existing answers matter, for the calculation of the AR?
  • Does closing a Qn as duplicate, increase the AR?
    e.g. A Qn has 3 answers & its linked dupe has 2 answers. Will the AR for just these 2 Qn-s be 2.5 or higher?
  • How to increase AR for this site?
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    Some times we refrain answering if there is an accepted or an upvoted answer. -- yes exactly. This post is to bring awareness about this trend. People should answer from more perspectives, irrespective of accepred, votes & date. Philosophy is anyways a very open subject.
    – iammilind
    Aug 27, 2017 at 11:37

1 Answer 1

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Based on the experiments from JasonC and the answer from Aurora0001 on How exactly are Area 51 beta stats calculated? I'm pretty confident the formula for Answer Ratio is:

(sum of answers not deleted) / (number of questions with at least one answer that are not deleted).

And this SEDE Query

select cast(sum(answercount) as float) 
     / count(*) [Answer Ratio]
from
posts
where posttypeid = 1 -- Q
and answercount >= 1
or closeddate is not null -- only open questions

would tell you today the answer ratio for Hinduism.SE is 1.6097222222222223 which is way closer to 1.6 that is mentioned on Area 51. I hand checked around 10 other sites against this query and they all line up so I assume that the SEDE refresh on sunday should bring those numbers back in line, at least that is what I hope.

Now we can answer your specific questions:

  • Answers are deleted due to lack of sources & low quality. Are those counted in the AR, which has to be minimum 2.5 as per the area 51?

    No, they are not. It makes no sense to account for content no one is going to see

  • Do votes to existing answers matter, for the calculation of the AR?

    No, votes do not matter although questions without answers that have a score above 0 are considered unanswered and as such show up on the unanswered tab of the site, bringing those questions to the attention of possible answerers.

  • Does closing a Qn as duplicate, increase the AR? e.g. A Qn has 3 answers & its linked dupe has 2 answers. Will the AR for just these 2 Qn-s be 2.5 or higher?

    No, closing as a duplicate has no effect on the ratio, AFAICT.

  • How to increase AR for this site?

    Post more answers, if possible multiple answers per question.

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    I think I've figured out where the discrepancy was coming from—closed questions are also counted as 'answered questions' (which isn't surprising, given how SE defines it). If you factor those in, the figures look a lot closer to Area 51's value. And, it turns out, I actually quoted the definition in my post that you linked to... and then I didn't notice it and used the wrong calculation instead. Fixed now.
    – Aurora0001
    Sep 9, 2017 at 11:03
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    @Aurora0001 thanks for that!
    – rene
    Sep 9, 2017 at 11:06
  • According to this post, Do the statistics show on Area 51 include also the closed questions?, it seems that the closed Qn are having some effect on answer ratio. Can you recheck and update.
    – iammilind
    Sep 11, 2017 at 6:31
  • @iammilind %answered is a different stat then Answer Ratio. You ask me to compare apples and oranges.
    – rene
    Sep 11, 2017 at 6:35
  • We may see the following equation in the linked answer: answerRatio = total_answers / (total_questions * answeredPercentage / 100); Since the closure of Qn affects %answers, then in turn it affects answer ratio as well. Let me know if it was interpreted wrongly by me.
    – iammilind
    Sep 11, 2017 at 6:50

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