Questions tagged [answers]
The answers tag has no usage guidance.
42
questions
2
votes
1
answer
100
views
How many people are answering questions?
Is there a way to pull the stats on the demographic of people who are answering questions?
I get the impression there are only a few of us and we close questions we don't know the answer to and write ...
- 71k
21
votes
3
answers
881
views
Avoid using ChatGPT or other AI-powered solutions to generate answers to questions on Software Engineering
Although the problem is not yet as big as it is on Stack Overflow, there have been some confirmed attempts of accounts using AI-powered solutions, like ChatGPT, to generate and post several answers to ...
Thomas OwensMod
- 79.9k
2
votes
1
answer
45
views
How to determine which answer is most correct
My question, if there is ...a canonical way to format 'usage' output for a cli script? has two good answers. One addresses the question posed, but the other addresses my specific use case presented ...
- 131
9
votes
3
answers
126
views
Unclear question is clarified in comment, later comment is deleted and contradictory clarification added to question
I recently encountered the following scenario:
OP asks a question which is missing some information.
Answerer asks for clarification in a comment.
OP clarifies in a comment but does not edit the ...
- 102k
13
votes
1
answer
280
views
How do I decide whether to post an answer I'm unsure of?
I have an idea for an answer to a question that I think might be helpful, but the question is outside of my area of expertise, so my answer might be more harmful than helpful.
How do I decide to post ...
- 731
-1
votes
1
answer
82
views
Why did this answer get down- and delete-voted?
Here is the answer at hand: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/329219/243450
- 73
11
votes
1
answer
342
views
Should I answer a question which belongs on Stack Overflow?
I always believed that there is an important distinction between off-topic questions which are... well, “plain off-topic”, and the ones which are off-topic because they simply belong on a different SE ...
- 135k
3
votes
0
answers
126
views
What to do when the best answer doesn't solve the question
I have a peculiar situation.
I asked this question and someone answered the question well by saying that the implementation I was planning on using is more of an anti-pattern as it is not addressing ...
- 161
2
votes
0
answers
114
views
Answer to a specific question and a very broad question
I was composing an answer to Can I distribute a GPL executable (not a library) in a closed-source application? when I discovered it has been closed as a duplicate of Can I use GPL, LGPL, MPL licensed ...
- 593
0
votes
1
answer
63
views
Are incomplete answers okay?
Coming up on this discussion - https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/a/271585/53263
Because I'm trying to avoid this problem - Are answers being posted as comments?
My answer is reproduced ...
- 2,212
5
votes
1
answer
174
views
Should I post a comment answering a question when I don't have time for a detailed answer?
From time to time, there are questions which I can be answered per se with one short sentence. A detailed answer would be more valuable for both the community and the person asking the question, but a ...
- 135k
1
vote
2
answers
167
views
Why didn't auto-protection kick in in this question?
Per my reading of the timeline, this question has got 3 answers in 24 hours from new users (i.e. users who earned less than 10 reputation on the site, excluding any association bonuses): https://...
- 21.4k
2
votes
2
answers
61
views
What's the policy for pure citational answers?
Are pure citational answers considered a Good Answer ™ vis-á-vis general StackOverflow policies?
Should the citation be labelled in some way to credit the source of the borrowed wisdom, and if so,
...
- 2,423
3
votes
2
answers
131
views
Top answers duplicated on community wiki question
The two most-upvoted answers on this question are identical: Should curly braces appear on their own line? It seems like a bug... surely the exact same answer would not have been upvoted so much twice....
- 6,470
2
votes
1
answer
45
views
Is it possible for moderators to move answers from one question to another?
I've just been reading this question: How can a single developer make use of Agile Methods?. And after refreshing, I saw it was closed for being a duplicate to Agile for the Solo Developer. I don't ...
- 9,789
8
votes
1
answer
427
views
Why always answers of users who have the maximum reputation in a question accepted and voted up?
Even my answer is more helpful, users upvote an answer which is written by a user who has the maximum reputation and owner of the question accepts that answer.
On the other hand, a downvoted answer ...
- 1,752
2
votes
3
answers
119
views
Is it against policy here to answer questions of a legal nature unless you're a lawyer?
I answered a legal question, with the usual disclaimer about not being a lawyer. My answer was not only down-voted for this, but, when I tried to discuss why it was down-voted, my comments were ...
- 695
3
votes
4
answers
128
views
Is it appropriate to copy-paste an answer when it matches both questions, but those questions are not an exact duplicate?
It was suggested to me to copy-paste my answer to another question which I marked as duplicate, but which looks larger than the original question.
I was totally against this technique: duplicating an ...
- 135k
3
votes
3
answers
545
views
The ethics of answering homework questions
It is tempting for students to ask their homework questions here, and it is equally tempting for people that know the answer to chip in with their answers. What are the ethics of this practice? (I ...
- 297
7
votes
3
answers
144
views
What's the upper character limit for a post's size? (and implement a warning system for it)
I seem to have reached this limit while editing my answer to:
I've inherited 200K lines of spaghetti code -- what now?
This is a bit frustrating, as the editor didn't warn me, so I typed away and ...
- 28.9k
16
votes
3
answers
496
views
Accepting answers too fast
In my opinion, most new users who post their first question generally fall into one of two categories:
People who post the question, get an answer they like, then ignore the site whatsoever. This is ...
- 4,485
3
votes
0
answers
67
views
Are answers to homework questions acceptable? [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
How can Programmers.SE be used to assist students with class assignments?
The question How to solve this problem without the use of if-else statements?
was recently asked. And ...
user20891
-1
votes
1
answer
35
views
In what order do answers appear?
When I answer a question, it appears near the bottom among the 0 votes answers (because it is new). However, it does not appear at the very bottom, nor are the 0 vote answers ordered by reputation.
...
- 3,115
5
votes
1
answer
178
views
Bad answer: so bad that it should be deleted?
I gave a bad answer. It was bad because:
it had a flame-bait quote
it was mostly off-topic
it originally didn't even answer the actual question (now it kinda does)
My question is, how bad is this ...
user39685
-4
votes
1
answer
66
views
Why is the answer order randomized?
I think the new system of randomizing the answers regardless of Votes is Flawed.
It appears that users are (most likely unintentionally) abusing this. Simply re-word the current best answer and you ...
- 14.7k
7
votes
3
answers
294
views
Is profanity allowed in answers or questions?
I have never seen anyone swear in a question or an answer, but I haven't seen any rules regarding profanity either. I'm just wondering: is there some sort of regulation against profanity, or is it ...
- 619
8
votes
3
answers
176
views
Is it acceptable to totally rewrite an up-voted answer?
I recently wrote an answer to Programmers.SE which has caused some controversy. I'm starting to realize that the biggest issue is probably not the content (or lack of content) of the answer, but its ...
- 23.5k
5
votes
4
answers
383
views
Should a joking answer be deleted (or was it not aparent this was a joke)?
The original question was:
I'm currently trying to decide what
server-side language to learn and use
for web development, and while it's
relatively easy to get information on
why x, y, or z ...
user28480
38
votes
12
answers
2k
views
Why are people still mass upvoting non-answers?
I'm sorry to flog a dead horse, but I'm honestly disgusted by the conduct in the Programming Tourism question.
I want to be clear about this. I would never do the kind of thing he's proposing. I'd ...
- 44k
21
votes
11
answers
754
views
Peer Pressure in Voting?
"Oh! this answer has highest votes it must be good bling upvote!!".
The kind of votes that keep getting added to the most catchy answer because it has high votes already.
A kind of peer pressure ...
- 3,537
15
votes
5
answers
549
views
Do some users delete their low-voted answers? Is this ok?
While running some Data Explorer queries, I noticed a user who has no answers with less than 2 votes (more than 100 total). As I don't yet have 10k I can't view the deleted posts, but I am assuming ...
- 28.1k
26
votes
5
answers
1k
views
How to discourage crowd-pleasing non-answers?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3st-Hai1y54
A lot of good and fairly specific questions on P.SE end up getting answers that are witty, abstract, agreeable and popular -- but have no substance, and don'...
- 4,541
12
votes
5
answers
576
views
Should LMGTFY be banned?
On StackOverflow, lmgtfy.com is banned by a word filter, because it's insulting and because it's not in keeping with the goals of the site which is to be a encyclopedia of sorts of answers to common ...
- 2,394
7
votes
4
answers
131
views
What's the etiquette for repeat answers?
Just wondering but I've seen it happen a number of times, but when answers get blatantly obvious duplicate/repeat answers from multiple people. Now, I normally just upvote the first person if the ...
- 28.2k
2
votes
6
answers
471
views
Answers that irritate me.
I dont know if this is a question but to me it seems wrong that these answers exist.
Take this question Is anything in programming truly evil?
. Currently there is 35 answers and i counted about 7 ...
user2528
8
votes
2
answers
262
views
How to encourage thoughtful answers to complex questions?
Many questions on Programmers.SE are complex, behavior related and subjective ("My team lead is a psycho", "How to best teach coding", "Meetings in agile" etc). The nuances and depth of the questions ...
- 13.3k
3
votes
1
answer
69
views
Sort answers by oldest
Maybe I am going senile, but I had answers sorted by "oldest" and now it says "newest". Was this ever an option, or did I just dream it one night?
- 4,791
2
votes
1
answer
104
views
Lost answers (during server migration?) [duplicate]
Possible Duplicate:
Question I asked dissappeared
A couple of answers and comments that I wrote a few hours ago have mysteriously disappeared from the site. Does this have anything to do with the ...
- 2,394
-2
votes
5
answers
344
views
Should the point distribution system be changed to encourage discussion, not answering?
Relating to "why should anyone accept an answer", why not alter the point allocation system in a way that encourages discussion, thought provoking questions, or something along those lines?
It could ...
- 6,038
2
votes
2
answers
98
views
Polling as a measure to prevent answer flood.
Here is an example (speculative) of the question:
What IDE do you like.
So, shortly we'd see something like:
'VS6 blah-blah..' x500
'blah-blamm VS2010..' x100
'bzzzz Eclipse..' x1000
'vim is cool!' ...
- 101
9
votes
1
answer
47
views
Should each point be posted in a separate answer?
This is an issue in a lot of subjective questions but is relevant particularly here. Should people post large answers with lots of points or post each one in a separate answer?
- 2,672
32
votes
7
answers
2k
views
Why would anyone accept an answer?
I'm looking at the questions proposed during the Area 51 process:
My supervisor thinks that all If statements should include else statements. Do you agree?
What are common mistakes in Software ...
Thomas OwensMod
- 79.9k