How do sites moderate self-answered questions?

Question

Historically our beta site has discouraged self-answered questions.

The site has been running for 6 years (3 questions/day, 98% answered, 3 ½ answers/question, and very few questions are closed). The topic of the site can be a bit "subjective" (like Parenting, or amateur History), sometimes opinionated, and not entirely dry and technical like Stack Overflow.

We have discouraged self-answered questions -- because, as one of the moderators says,

I'm strongly opposed to giving green light to quasi-questions posted with the sole intent to share an opinion, an unsolicited teaching, rambling, philosophical musings etc. [...] self-answering [might be] utilized to take advantage of the SE platform to push unsolicited info at the audience [...] I'm not convinced we should greenlight a random newbie getting on the proverbial soap box [...]. How are we to decide who is allowed to get on the box and who's not? I suppose the main issue here is community self-moderation or rather the lack thereof.

My experience of other SE sites has been that self-answering isn't an important feature -- that the large majority of topics, and of the most upvoted answers, are all people answering other people's questions. So IMO if the community votes it wants to avoid people using self-answered questions to preach on the topic of their own choice (i.e. by posting a rhetorical question and self-answering), then that's fair enough -- i.e. it's not a huge diversion from SE's core mission as a Q&A site.

I'm aware that SE also usually encourages people to self-answer and hopes its sites may become like Wikis (which IMO is fair enough when the subject matter is like SO's).

My fear is that self-answered questions may be:

• Mostly summaries of or references to material already available online elsewhere
• A bit spammy (e.g. a summary of something on the OP's blog or YouTube channel)
• Someone might flood the site with unlimited self-answered topics
• It can be preachy -- users who disagree in their answers within one topic might use further self-answered questions to continue their disagreement into other topics
• People (or trolls) might post extremist, unorthodox, unwelcome, controversial views on topics of their own choosing.

Someone recently argued though that "experts" want to be able to post self-answered topics and won't frequent the site if they are not allowed to.

---

What's your experience (and on which site)?

• Are self-answered topics a problem, a distinct category, difficult to control or to quality-control?

• How do you (do you even) prevent people posting the kinds of low-quality or problematic content which I listed above)? What implements the prevention -- is it the community, the moderators, or some site-specific policies about what content is welcome?

• Do self-answered questions seem a bit spammy sometimes? How to not be a spammer says,

  Always solve the asker's problem. A good answer should at minimum allow the person whose question you're answering to solve their problem. Not all questions can be answered this way, but if you don't think you can write up a complete solution then you're better off looking for a different question.

  ... but a problem with self-answered questions is that there isn't even an asker -- the post is unsolicited, it's not cooperative like answering someone else's question.

---

Historically when someone posts a question in order to self-answer it, a moderator says, "That's not really conventional on this site, this is a Q&A site which is preferably for answering other people's questions".

So we've had little experience with allowing self-answered questions -- and having to quality-control or moderate them.

How does a site cope with the various kinds of problem listed above, without deprecating all self-answered questions categorically?

Answer 1

I'm a moderator on two sites, on both of which I've earned Reversal badges on meta for defending self-answered questions to OPs who suggested discouraging or disallowing them:

• https://scifi.meta.stackexchange.com/a/9821/31394
• https://literature.meta.stackexchange.com/a/436/17

The long and the short of it is that self-answered questions are explicitly allowed and encouraged by Stack Exchange, and I've never seen any major problems with them on any of the sites I know.

Here's a very popular and well-researched self-answer on Movies & TV. Here's one on Sci-Fi & Fantasy. Here's one on Literature. Here's one on Puzzling.

Sure, there have been less successful self-answered questions too, but that's never been a major issue or concern on any of the sites I know about. Sometimes a user has posted self-answers which seem pointless or uninteresting to the community, and in that case they get hit hard with downvotes. But if a Q&A pair is useful and interesting, surely it should be rewarded regardless of who wrote it. To address your concerns one by one:

• Mostly summaries of or references to material already available online elsewhere

  That can be a good thing, if the material is all compiled in one place for the first time. This self-answer contains a long list of information which was technically "already available online elsewhere", but only by trawling through dozens of different webpages to collate that list.

• A bit spammy (e.g. a summary of something on the OP's blog or YouTube channel)

  Usual self-promotion rules apply. If someone is promoting their stuff without attribution, mods can take appropriate action whether they're answering their own question or someone else's. If someone is promoting their own stuff too much, mods may need to have a word with them, but that's not directly a consequence of being able to self-answer.

• Someone might flood the site with unlimited self-answered topics

  I've seen this type of fear very often on SE, usually as an argument for making something off-topic: "but if we allow people to ask questions like this, someone could flood the site with hundreds of them!" My response is always that such floodings are almost unheard of and can be dealt with individually if they ever arise. Many question types on many sites are "mass-producible" but still on-topic. Most people don't flood the site with unlimited questions, and if someone does, then it's a problem with that user not with the type of question.

• It can be preachy -- users who disagree in their answers within one topic might use further self-answered questions to continue their disagreement into other topics

  If people post bad answers, they should be downvoted regardless of whether they're self-answers or not. If people post good answers, it's a win-win situation. Voting will usually handle this kind of situation, in my experience.

• People (or trolls) might post extremist, unorthodox, unwelcome, controversial views on topics of their own choosing.

  Again, if people are trolling or posting offensive content, they can be banned or the posts removed just as if those posts weren't self-answers. Nobody's advocating for allowing any and all content in self-answered questions, just for treating self-answered questions the same way as others.

TL;DR: your concerns aren't really about self-answered questions as such, but general site moderation issues. If people abuse the system using self-answered questions, that can be handled just like any other abuse of the system.

Answer 2

You ask for experience on other sites so I answer about the two where I have longest experience and on which I am not a moderator.

On CrossValidated my impression is that these are rare. One case which does occur is that following a discussion in the meta site about the need for a canonical question and answer about a topic some expert will post a question and then give a comprehensive answer. This can then be used as a target for closure as a duplicate. Not surprisingly this is seen as valuable and usually gets heavily up-voted.

On Spanish.se we get a few of these and they are usually from respected users and so are received in the same way as normal questions and answers. There is sometimes a time gap between the question being posted and the answer which may imply that the OP had to do more research to find the answer.

Answer 3

I find that it's usually pretty easy to distinguish between a question that is merely serving to provide a venue for an answer, and a genuine question that happens to also have been answered by its asker. If a question is well-written, contextualises itself in the broader field of knowledge through references or quotes, and clearly shows why someone might be left wondering something by the sources of knowledge that are out there or why they might think there is a contradiction between two facts, etc, then that's a good question. Self-answers aren't relevant. If they don't do that, which is semi-common for the self-answers I see, then that's a poor question. Depending on the site there might be reason to close it (perhaps as Unclear, because it's unclear why anyone would be wondering what the question asks), but at the very least downvotes would be warranted. And maybe a comment to tell the poster to get a blog if they just have thoughts they want to publish.

Answer 4

I think your site can have self-answers just as well as any other. Of course not every question is suited for a self-answer, but as others before me have answered there are already mechanisms to deal with that.

I took a look at your site, and I found that these questions for example could perfectly be self answered. The first question is formulated rather broad, but the most upvoted answer cites a great number of sources that could also been given by the OP as a self-answer.

If a question tends to draw opinionated (preaching) answers, as you fear, it should be closed as "Opinion-based". Albeit that being a hard thing with such a subjective topic as religion.

Answer 5

I agree with Rand al'Thor's answer completely (in short, moderate them exactly like you would do anything else), but I wanted to add an additional point:

I think you are being way too cautious here. There's no reason to try to anticipate and prevent every problem that can possibly occur on a site. There are an infinite number of potential problems, but a very finite set of problems that ever actually occur. If you keep trying, you are going to drive yourself crazy and not get very much done!

It looks like you may have partially realized this already from one of your comments:

Part of my problem might be that I've trying to protect the community (from disruptive behavior) and the site (from unasked-for answers), by preemptively discouraging people's self-answering

Self-answering can be a very useful tool and there are good reasons why they are not only allowed, but encouraged across the network. Disallowing them out of fear that they will be abused (especially in the face of evidence from other site that show it hasn't been an issue) is just shooting yourself in the foot for no good reason.

What I would recommend is to keep thinking about this stuff and all the advice given in the answers here, but meanwhile allow self-answered questions on the site. Then, deal with problems as they come up. That way you are solving real issues on your site and not potential imaginary problems. Your site won't crash and burn the first time it encounters a small bump. In fact, that's how communities grow and learn how to manage themselves: by encountering and overcoming issues.

Answer 6

A comment suggested this might answer the question -- What can be done to improve moderation of self-answered questions? -- the question is relevant to this topic, but its answers aren't very useful to me.

Jeff's answer says to moderate like any other question -- ensure it's a high-quality question, which may attract other answers too.

Jon's answer seems especially about how to make a good self-answered question better:

• If it's duplicate then close as duplicate
• If it doesn't seem a useful question then close as "Not a Real Question"
• Make the answer encyclopedic (or "canonical"?), answer it two or three ways
• Cooperate with the community in improving it.

That's not quite the same as my question, which is apparently more how to squelch low-quality self-answers.

I note that "Not a Real Question" sounds appropriate but is no longer one of the available close options -- it was replaced by "too broad" or "unclear" -- not really the kinds of problems I fear, e.g. "spammy", "preachy", "insincere", "argumentative", "controversial", "too many", etc.

---

Another comment suggested this: Asking questions to add to the general knowledge pool

The answers to that describe beneficial use cases, i.e. why it can be useful -- not why it can be harmful and how to handle it if it is.

One highly upvoted comment (more popular than any answer) suggests,

Just stop making judgement based on who is posting a question and who is answering it. The value of a question/answer pair doesn't really depend on who is the poster.

---

RandalThor's answer references this topic which says self-answered questions might be downvoted because they're self-answered -- and says that people who understand that self-answered questions are allowed should focus instead on whether the post is "good content".

---

There are some posts on the Christianity Meta, here and here.

One suggests that if you self-answer then you might prefer to accept someone else's:

As a matter of habit, I prefer not to accept my own answers and am eager to reward competing ones.

The other is interesting as suggests that self-answering should be used for genuinely difficult questions which required research. Also make sure it's not a duplicate, and spend time on the question, including your prior research (which IMO will help to make it a genuine question)

Make sure you spend almost as much effort on the question as you did on the answer. Much like on Stackoverflow we want people who ask questions to tell us what they've tried attempting to work out their problem. Tell us what you thought about, where you looked before you found the answer etc. If you can't write more than a sentence or two about the problem, seriously consider whether you're the right person to be asking this question.

As a side-effect IMO this would keeps the OP from seeming to be conceited -- because they depict themselves as a fellow-student, not a teacher. The effort also makes the question and its self-answer more accessible, to any fellow-students and to teachers.

---

The Hinduism Meta encourages people to self-answer even if the answer is easily Googleable (and people do because they feel enthusiastic).

Shog9 suggested there that poeople shouldn't (he posted this after the site had been open for only a week):

There are a lot of questions here that are... Pretty basic. "Could be answered by a Wikipedia entry" basic. Questions that require no expertise aren't a particularly good way to attract experts. You gotta expect a few of these, but when every other question can be answered by a Google search...

...And worse yet, an awful lot of them are answered that way: by quoting external sources. A site that just regurgitates things that others have written isn't much good; answers like that just clog up search results without adding anything. It's important to cite your sources, but just as important to demonstrate knowledge of both the question being answered and the topic itself - this is where we can actually make the Internet a better place, demonstrating how to use this knowledge to answer specific questions. Answers that are primarily copied from Wikipedia or other forums / blogs - even when properly attributed - are just speed-bumps, annoyances to folks searching for good information.

I'd really like to see more questions that require some serious research and experience to answer... I know some of you have been studying these topics for years, and are well past the beginner stages of your education - what sort of problems do you encounter?

So I take it we should bear in mind that answers and self-answered questions should not be little more than a reference to or a copy from, a summary of, some external source..

Answer 7

A possible partial answer might be that self-answering shouldn't be used for any self-promotion.

• If you want to reference your own blog, you can -- but only in your answers to other people's questions as described in How to not be a spammer
• You can post questions to self-answer them, but these answers should be self-contained -- i.e. instead of a blog, and not in order to summarise and reference your own blog or book.

In theory this policy too might depend on the quality of the post -- if it's good then it's welcome -- however perhaps even if the OP were a famous author, a respected subject matter expert and a good writer, their posting "Question + Short Answer + Reference to a publication of mine" would seem a bit spammy.

Answer 8

Thank you for all your answers.

I've tried to propose a new FAQ here -- Proposal: Self-answering questions is welcome