Your answer is in another castle Part 2: can we stop the confusion about NAA flags and posts that tackle a different question from the one posted?

Question

DISCLAIMER: This is not yet another post trying to discuss what NAA posts are and / or answers to different questions are NAA. What this post is trying to do is to find a way to stop people for having to discuss that in the first place.

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This post is meant to be a follow up on Shog9 original "Your answer is in another castle: when is an answer not an answer?" post.

With that question, Shog attempted to shed some light on the very widespread confusion about what actually a Not An Answer (NAA) post is. He makes some pretty valid arguments and also explains the subtle difference between Not An Answer and Link Only Answer.

His original post ends with an apparently very clear image:

... Seems clear, right? If someone asked for an apple:

• giving them an apple is the right answer.
• giving them an orange is not an answer.
• giving them an apple core is a partial answer
• pointing them to a place where they can buy an apple is probably a Link Only Answer (borderline NAA)
• and finally a moldy apple is a Low Quality Answer.

Seems pretty basic, right?
Let's then concentrate on the Orange picture. This seems to hint that giving an orange to someone asking for an apple is not to be considered an answer.

With that in mind, have a look at some questions about declined NAA flags / NAA post handling:

• When an answer answers the wrong question, is it Not An Answer?

• Either I need clarification on the 'Not an answer' flags or it needs a new description

• Making sure the "Not an answer" flag is used for non-answers

• Is this a real answer?

• Can we have an unambiguous, official ruling on what the "not an answer" flag is for?

• NAA, or just bad answer?

• An answer to a wrong question: flag was declined (BAD: one mod declined the flag, another deleted the post for the same reason afterward?!!)

Even without reading all the referenced posts, it should be clear that there is a lot of confusion regarding the NAA flag: some users argue that an unrelated answer (answering another question) is NAA, while others state that an answer to the wrong question is wrong but still an answer. This is somehow aggravated by the fact that many time opposing arguments are also made to justify flags handling in both directions, sometimes by referencing the orange picture, sometimes by stating that mods can't evaluate if an answer is really answering the question and so on.

The wording used to describe "NAA" flags doesn't help either:

Again, "does not attempt to answer the question" has been interpreted in both ways, either to prove that giving an orange to someone who specifically asked for an apple is NAA or to say that only post that aren't semantically answers are NAA (for example a comment or a "me too" message).

This is not even a problem just Stack Overflow has. Out of curiosity, I visited some random network sites chatrooms and asked the users there what their view of the issue was. Once again, I got mixed answers going in both directions.

Therefore, I am asking for suggestion about how we can put an end to all this confusion once and for all.

My original idea was to change the original FAQS post and /or the flag description to use some wording that is less open to interpretation. That, obviously, would need the staff to first clarify what the official interpretation is in the first place (I think that they just consider NAA post that aren't answers at all, even to a different questions but since we had to come this far, I fear an extra confirmation is needed). That said, I am also open to other suggestions that would help to reduce the amount of "why my flag was declined" posts we are getting.

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EDIT: Since some of the replies/comments have referenced the X/Y problem, I want to clarify that my argument wasn't specifically aimed at those kind of posts. Instead, I was thinking about answers that answer a different and unrelated question than the one that was asked, sometime offering an unasked for alternative in the process. Here are some samples to help clarify what I mean (all sample have been made up):

• Question ask how Superman can fly, Answer explains why Batman can't instead
• Question asks why Pluto is sometime not considered a planet, Answer explains why the moon isn't.
• Question ask how to translate a sentence into French, Answer explains how to translate it into Italian
• Question asks why a snippet of code copied from an online sample doesn't produce the same results as in the demo, Answer suggest moving to a different tool / framework instead.
• Question asks who was the first Roman king, Answer explains how to build a steam engine.

Answer 1

I wrote that post - and threw together that collage - to try to establish a shared baseline understanding for answer flagging, a set of things that hopefully we could all agree on.

Because... Of course there are a great many things that we won't all agree on. Some sites have extremely strict standards for answers; others allow questions that are almost exclusively X-Y problems; still others are very tolerant of short hints vs. lengthy explanations. Heck... The sorts of answers that are useful to askers and readers can vary immensely even between tags on a single site. Trying to shoehorn every possible problem with possible answer to every possible question on every possible topic into a single short set of guidelines is impossible.

And that's fine. I'd rather be a part of a community that's able and willing to disagree on things, discuss them, and come to a consensus based on individual judgement than one which feels compelled to have a hard rule for every possible circumstance.

You lament the occasional instance where a dissatisfied flagger brings a case to meta. I rejoice in the ability of our people to evaluate posts on their merit and overturn moderator decisions when the need arises.

Every day, thousands upon thousands of answers are created, and thousands of flags are raised; it should surprise no one that there are occasional differences of opinion. We must have shared goals that inform our evaluations in these situations, but should never give up our ability to hold distinct and potentially contradictory opinions so long as we are all still working toward those goals.

Answer 2

The problem with NAA is different people see different definitions. Whether they should or not is another debate.

There are many meta debates about it.

The Stack Exchange community manager went to great lengths to make a long, descriptive post about what NAA is and should be. He even went to the extent of making an image about this.
Why would someone have to do this if NAA flag was already clear? (No offence Shog..:P)

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The flag title:

not an answer

Stack is at it's core about two things, "Q" and "A". So when you see an A (an "answer") with some text in it, it's understandable to call it "an answer" regardless of the quality, accuracy, etc - which adds confusion for "NAA".

The everyday definition away from Stack Exchange specifics of an answer (a response or attempt to answer) is still an answer when it's "wrong". So in people's eyes it's not "NAA", it's just a "wrong answer". And the word "answer" is still there.

 

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The flag description should explain it but instead it makes it worse:

The first sentence:

does not attempt to answer the question

"Attempt" means to try something, and one can fail an attempt. As such the lack of resulting success or quality has no bearing on that being defined as an "attempt".

So "does not attempt" is also a bit confusing for everyday definitions away from Stack Exchange specifics.

 

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Dictionary Definition:

answer

1. A thing that is said, written, or done as a reaction to a question, statement, or situation
2. The correct solution to a question in a test or quiz
3. A solution to a problem or dilemma.

Some people see an answer as "1", the real world definition, and has no requirement of being correct.
Stack Exchange use "2" and "3" for the specific requirements of NAA. This is fine, but it is "specific" to Stack Exchange and not obvious on face value.

So for Stack Exchange, and to satisfy the requirements of using "NAA" flag, an answer has to be either a "solution" or "correct solution".

In which case:
Change suggestion to the NAA flag to remove ambiguity and confusion:

not a valid answer
This does not answer the question in the manner required for this site. It should possibly be an edit, a comment, another question, or deleted altogether.

The above suggestion:

1. Removes all ambiguity regarding what the definition of an answer is because it still calls it an answer, it's just not "valid" for this site.
2. Caters for the following response types:
   • "Thanks that solved it for me"
   • "I'm having this issue too"
   • "What do you see when you display the error?"
   • "Click this link for your answer on the blog post [link]"
3. Caters for use on any of the sites, due to the "for this site" bit, used for any scenarios a site specifically needs.

 

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Quoting Shog9's comment:

Your proposed wording doesn't actually remove ambiguity; it just pushes it somewhere else.

The proposed word "valid" in the suggested flag title removes a lot of ambiguity, of whether this is an answer or not. Yes there's some ambiguity about what is a "valid" answer is now, but surely that is a vastly smaller debate. And such ambiguity is present in all flags, with the potential to not know what something should be in some debatable specifics.

I think we'd need to do something akin to what we did with the "Off Topic" close reason: link to another page that clarifies what those requirements are.

But that means people have to go read the help page to review and flag? If we're saying that there's some ambiguity here, which you made a huge post and an image to explain, potentially linking the flag to Help Centre is surely a half measure? Why not just change the flag and negate the need for images, long posts, debates, and links to the Help Centre?

I'm not really saying my suggestion fixes all possible issues, just that it improves the current problem drastically without creating an equal issue from the change.