Questions tagged [answers]
This tag is for questions about answers: how to answer, whether specific answers are appropriate, and so forth.
2,546
questions
5
votes
1answer
30 views
Reviewing First answers: Is a flag enough or should I also leave a comment?
I was recently awarded privileges to review 'First answers'. I was asked to review an answer that was this:
Answered and solved by @other_user
And the @other_user had submitted an answer themselves.
...
4
votes
0answers
54 views
When will Stack Overflow sort answers by software version? [duplicate]
I'll pose this question with Swift as a reference, but I know that it applies to many other languages/frameworks/libraries.
Swift answers are almost always made far less useful because questions often ...
8
votes
0answers
74 views
Links to migrated answers' revision histories incorrectly go to the parent question's revision history instead of the answer's history
When a question along with its answers is migrated to another site, only its latest revision is copied to the destination site. Originally, there was no attribution supplied to users who edited either ...
asked Nov 20 '21 at 9:51
Sonic the Anonymous Hedgehog
77.2k15 gold badges143 silver badges326 bronze badges
9
votes
1answer
120 views
When NAA includes rude language - red flaggable?
I know that the general rule for rude language is to edit it out if possible rather than knee-jerk red flagging it just for a few swear words or inappropriate terminology. So, for example, a post,
...
2
votes
0answers
42 views
Filter option for Unanswered [duplicate]
When you are looking at recent questions, your filter options are bountied, hot, week, and month (plus some site-specific ones).
It seems to me the only reason someone would be browsing questions is ...
11
votes
0answers
84 views
Add an option to leave a "This is a duplicate answer" comment when voting to delete an answer from review
When voting to delete an answer from review, the following reasons/comments are provided:
I often come across answers in the review queue that simply reiterate information that is already present in ...
3
votes
1answer
222 views
I found lots of "promising" questions (and answers) for my problem. Let's have a way to track the answers I've already tried?
I edited my question because it was closed. The side effect is that the answer I received becomes a "good workaround" instead of "good answer". Please let me know if this prevents ...
5
votes
0answers
60 views
Visually Differentiate/Highlight comments and answers provided by me for quick reference
Whenever I find an interesting answer or comment in a long list of answers, I Upvote the answer/comment so that if I land on the same question again in the future, I will know that I have already been ...
177
votes
26answers
9k views
Version labels for answers
We’d like to introduce version labels (official name and verbiage pending) for answers, a new product feature idea as part of the larger Outdated Answers project. We hope that this feature will help ...
3
votes
1answer
59 views
Answer text doesn't correspond with notification text in followed question. Expected behaviour?
In a followed question, I noticed the notification and checked the answer - both after the fact by 7 minutes I noticed a discrepancy:
Is this expected behaviour if a question's been edited within the ...
13
votes
0answers
85 views
Clicking to reveal a spoiler while editing causes page to scroll
Suppose you are writing a lengthy answer with some spoiler blocks in it. You want to check how some of it looks, so you scroll down to one of the spoiler blocks and click it.
What should happen: The ...
4
votes
1answer
63 views
How can I search my own answers with different search filters?
I know that I can search for my own answers/question by using:
user:me.
I also want to filter these questions/answers by the number of views.
Something like this:
user:me views:100
But the above query ...
7
votes
2answers
188 views
Is there any user data that can be used to infer how many answers are read on individual posts?
On Skeptics we are discussing the new "unpinned answer" feature and I had the thought that perhaps the discussion often assumes the premise that only the top answer is typically read. I don'...
-15
votes
3answers
213 views
Should answer scores decay? Discussion on making answer rankings for older questions more dynamic
Folks, this has nothing to do with reputation. It’s about ranking answers. Please stop trying to close it as a duplicate of one of the decade old discussions about reputation.
I think it would be ...
33
votes
8answers
559 views
Remove the -1 reputation penalty for downvoting answers on Meta.SE
Because other Meta sites in the network don't have their own reputation (instead relying on the reputation of their parent sites), there is no reputation penalty for downvoting answers on those sites. ...
20
votes
0answers
155 views
Add an option for mods and staff to pin a certain answer to the top on meta sites
Now that accepted answers are in the process of being unpinned, and that's likely to happen on meta sites too, we probably need another way to pin certain answers to the top. This will go in line with ...
242
votes
39answers
15k views
Unpinning the accepted answer from the top of the list of answers
Today we changed the way we sort answers on Stack Overflow. We no longer pin the accepted answer (with the green checkmark) to the top of the list of answers. By default, we now sort strictly by votes ...
asked Sep 8 '21 at 16:08
-4
votes
4answers
101 views
Read more button to allow better evaluation of the answer and avoid verbose answer stealing too much attention?
Often, if finding myself scrolling through very long answers (e.g. covering more than one screen scroll), so many good and updated answers are somehow pushed to the bottom by these verbose answers. I ...
1
vote
1answer
106 views
How can I self-answer my closed question? [duplicate]
I posted a question, however it was closed with a reason I don't understand.
I've found the answer myself and I would like to share the answer with the community, is there any way I can leave the ...
9
votes
0answers
153 views
A user answering duplicate questions and dupe-hammering them afterwards [duplicate]
For a long time now a six-figure user has been consistently answering questions from a certain tag and dupe-hammering quite a few of them right afterwards. I didn't think much of it until recently:
I ...
-10
votes
1answer
164 views
Am I not allowed to answer a post that is badly written?
Here I answered a question, but before doing so, I did provide anonymous feedback, from review, that the question needs improvement, but I got two downvotes, not because of the answer, so am I not ...
16
votes
0answers
124 views
Answers on migrated questions include a false notice that they were converted to comments
This question was recently migrated from Sustainability.SE to Politics.SE. There was already an answer when it was migrated, and as expected, that answer was included with the migration.
However, back ...
18
votes
0answers
125 views
Can we please warn people if they start answering a question that has close votes?
Answers being posted before closing invalidates the closing mechanism
Quite often, I see the issue of a stackizen posting their answer while question closure is being discussed in comments or has ...
0
votes
1answer
111 views
Why has there been no reduction in reputation? [duplicate]
In What is reputation? it states that you lose reputation by 2 when your answer is voted down and you gain reputation by 10 when your answer is voted up.
However, this answer from a new contributor ...
37
votes
3answers
502 views
Answer labels - my considerations [duplicate]
A recent post on SO Meta mentioned this:
[...] we are in the early exploration phase of:
[...]
making it possible to label individual answers with technology versions — for example, [python-v2] vs. [...
2
votes
0answers
46 views
Should outdated "Related" questions be edited to address the overarching problem? [duplicate]
I mainly contribute to ProWebmasters - Google changes all the time and I and notice a ton of questions that the correct answer to which is no longer relevant.
I come across a ton of very old "...
8
votes
0answers
114 views
How are spammers rate limited?
Question: Are there some additional limits for users who had some of their posts marked as spam (or rude/offensive)?
Typically, an account posting spam is a new user, with reputation 1. (Meaning that ...
15
votes
1answer
153 views
I wrote a very detailed answer on how black-skinned dwarves can still be realistic in a world with Earth-like evolution, got flagged for spam [duplicate]
This happened on World Building subwebsite. I'll try to post my answer below the separator line if the anti-spam will allow me.
Please, can I get any help on why is this considered a spam message, ...
13
votes
1answer
132 views
The "How do I write a good answer?" help page needs a tidy-up
If you go to the page "How do I write a good answer?" in the Help Centre, the first two points are:
Pay it forward
Saying “thanks” is appreciated, but it doesn’t answer the question. ...
9
votes
0answers
61 views
The Help Center implies that it's OK to answer duplicate questions if there aren't many duplicates; is this correct?
The Help Center article on how to write a good answer contains the following section:
Not all questions can or should be answered here. Save yourself some
frustration and avoid trying to answer ...
1
vote
0answers
63 views
Should I award bounty to a helpful, but incomplete, answer? [duplicate]
I raised a bounty of 100 rep on a fundamental yet non-trivial question on the mathematics Stack Exhange site. One genius guy answered the question; however, the answer was incomplete. Using those ...
6
votes
1answer
108 views
What is a good way to respond or comment to a boomerang answer? [duplicate]
What is a good way to respond to a boomerang answer, an answer that basically responds with "You don't want to do that, do this other thing"? Maybe I do want to use my cat as a mop for my ...
7
votes
0answers
118 views
A simple way to make new answers more discoverable
In my opinion, one shortcoming of Stack Exchange is the discoverability of new answers on questions.
This simple feature proposal would make it more enticing for users to discover new answers, while ...
-3
votes
1answer
118 views
Allow changing your vote if a new answer is posted?
This isn't Allow changing votes on answers if the question is edited
Sometimes I vote on an answer because at the time it is correct (upvote), or they do not explain very well and it looks wrong (...
18
votes
0answers
105 views
Show the answer author in suggested edit reviews
Today, I was going through a suggested edit and found that it was shortening the code (something that we don't allow on our site (Code Golf)). However, when I tried to reject it, it had already been ...
2
votes
1answer
145 views
What happens with "Does this answer your question?" - Yes [duplicate]
Question
When one/more users suggest another post answers your question (and there is a banner at the top of the page asking if question title answers your question? Yes/No), what physically happens ...
3
votes
1answer
63 views
How can I quickly jump to a specific answer when I've posted multiple answers to the same question?
It's easy to find a question of mine in my user profile by reading the titles of the questions in the Questions tab. It's similar for answers when I've only posted one answer to a question. I can find ...
1
vote
1answer
61 views
Button to show the version of the question as of when answer was posted / last edited?
Sometimes when reading an answer it doesn't seem to correspond entirely to the question asked, and if I want to find out why the procedure then becomes:
Scroll up to the question again
Check if it ...
2
votes
0answers
42 views
Best practice about average time to accept an answer and accept answer decision [duplicate]
What is the common sense for the time to accept a user answer?
For example, I usually think that I need to wait, for example, 1 week or more, because some questions have more than one answer and I ...
-2
votes
1answer
184 views
No check mark – How do I mark an answer as accepted? [duplicate]
I recently asked a question and would like to mark one of the answers as accepted. The problem is that I do not see a way to do so. On the left-hand side of the answer I can either vote up/down or ...
5
votes
3answers
160 views
Is there a certain amount of time after which a new question is unlikely to get any answers?
Can anyone else confirm my suspicions here? I have found that whenever I post a new question, if it is going to receive any answers at all, it will happen within the first few hours of posting. After ...
-18
votes
1answer
108 views
The "working on it" proposal [duplicate]
It bothers me a lot when I'm spending some time and effort trying to answer a question only to learn it got closed for any reason. It's just a lot of time wasted. So I have come up with a solution for ...
8
votes
1answer
307 views
If a user is banned from posting answers, state so before they start writing the answer
Answer-banned users aren't informed they can't post an answer before they try to post an answer (which typically happens after they write an answer). They're only notified when they've finished their ...
16
votes
0answers
152 views
Add the share button to (other) answers in review queues
When reviewing an answer in one of the Low Quality Posts, First Posts, or Late Answers queues, there is the option to watch the Other answers of the question. This gives a more "naked" view ...
-15
votes
1answer
110 views
Automatic following of answers to your question [duplicate]
There should be an option so when you are the OP of a question and it gets answered, the OP is notified of any comments to that answer without having to manually follow each answer. It would be ...
-17
votes
1answer
88 views
Low-quality answer auto-comments sound a little hard to new users
When reviewing low quality posts, I came across this post and recommended its deletion. The system automatically left a comment saying,
If you have a new question, please ask it by clicking the Ask ...
2
votes
1answer
71 views
Can I answer my own question without accepting it?
I recently posed a question on stack exchange biology about how viruses persist outside the body, and HPV in particular.
The question received some upvotes initially but no answers. After putting a ...
1
vote
2answers
221 views
Is it typical for self-answered questions to be downvoted? [duplicate]
As a habit, I have always tried to answer my own questions on Stack Overflow and other sites if no one provided an answer, and I later found the answer myself. I consider this to be essential to ...
5
votes
1answer
71 views
Is the question asker notified of updates to answers without explicitly "following" that answer?
This certainly never used to be a thing, but I'm wondering if this behaviour has changed with the "increased notifications" - without the OP having to explicitly "follow" that ...
2
votes
2answers
103 views
Is it a good approach to report a bug with an answer to a similar question, rather than asking a new question?
Is it a good approach to report a bug with an answer to a similar question, rather than asking a new question?
I see something like this happening here:
Stack Overflow for Teams is now free for up to ...
