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Mark recently deleted one of my answers:

https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/128440/25885

The questioner was asking roughly: by not finishing my degree, what is the long-term effect on my career?

He also appended: "I apologies for the poor punctuation."

For those without 10k privileges, my response was along the lines that clear writing skills are vital to business and come through practice; I ended with: "Nothing improves one's writing skills as much as practice and University is an excellent place to get practice writing, re-writing, and editing."

I thought my answer was well-written, addressed this specific questioner's question, made specific suggestions how to improve the clarity of his writing, and it had an aggregate score of +4 (I can't yet view my actual scores here) so at least some others thought my answer had merit.

In what way did I fail to address the questioner's question?

Thank you

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Your answer strictly speaking didn't answer the question, though it did offer helpful advice and would better serve as a comment.

If your answer was one of only a couple I would advocate against deleting it, but on the degree vs experience type questions that tend to attract tons of answers those that are less than stellar need to be culled or the entire question becomes useless.

The number and quality of answers has an effect on what is an acceptable answer, a mediocre answer is better than no answer, but another mediocre answer among 10 is not desirable and should be discouraged, similarly adding a mediocre answer to a question with a great answer(s) already should be discouraged. Deleting poor answers is a way to discourage them from spreading, and it's a judgement call for moderators, one that I'm glad I don't have to make.

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  • Many thanks for the feedback.
    – sarnold
    Jan 6, 2012 at 23:57
  • and it's a judgement call for moderators, one that I'm glad I don't have to make. So true...
    – yannis
    Jan 7, 2012 at 13:05
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Your answer addressed primarily punctuation issues, rather then experience vs. degree. Mark left a comment to this effect.

While this is all and good, the question is about experience versus degree, not the merits of proper punctuation and commend of the English language. – Mark Trapp ♦

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  • is the typo in that quote you or mark?
    – Ryathal
    Jan 6, 2012 at 14:29
  • @Ryathal I copied it directly, see cl.ly/3W2s262y3b1w2d073C1g
    – Josh K
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:35
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    then i can enjoy the irony fully
    – Ryathal
    Jan 6, 2012 at 15:44
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    @Ryathal It was intentional. Yeah... that's what I'm going with. Intentional. To make a point.
    – user8
    Jan 6, 2012 at 16:15
  • Many thanks for the feedback.
    – sarnold
    Jan 6, 2012 at 23:57

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