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Background

There are many questions about answers to off-topic questions.

"Should I downvote an answer only on its quality?", which has a slightly misleading title, addresses the issue of downvoting answers of low quality questions, based on the fact the question is low quality, as do many other questions in the search linked above.


Ultimate Goal

Improving quality of questions. The biggest hindrance to deleting poor quality questions is the presence of upvoted answers. This proposal ensures there are not upvoted answers to poor quality questions and seeks to discourage users from answering them, in a push to lift/maintain the quality of posts on the site.


The Proposal - Stage 1

Implementing a disincentive for speedy answers to questions closed as UNCLEAR WHAT YOU ARE ASKING


Mechanics

  1. For this first proposal, I am suggesting to include unclear what you are asking, as a test run, as by definition, if it's unclear what you are asking, then there can be no reasonable answer (except by mind readers).

  2. Determine a maximum time limit from when a question is posted till closed: say 12 hours. I have used the Explainer badge as an example of choosing 12 hours. Although this can tweaked.

Edit and answer 1 question (both actions within 12 hours, answer score > 0).

  1. If the question is closed within the time limit as unclear what you are asking, any upvote reputation that was received in that time is reversed, the same way serial voting is reversed.

  2. If the question remains closed and unanswerable, the upvote embargo remains enforced.


Reasoning

This serves the following purposes:

  1. If the question is edited to be ontopic,

    • the answerers are then free to edit or delete without complaint of the original question changing, as they knew the risk of answering unclear questions, thereby solving the issue of the morphing questions with posted answers (in this case).
    • Answerers are then free to edit or delete their answers to fit the questions without having the benefit of upvotes on a post that may be completely changed in it's intent.
    • If answers are not edited, they risk being downvoted, assisting in the removal of poor quality answers.
    • An edited answer after the question is reopened lifts the voting embargo from this time going forward.
  2. People looking for quick and easy rep gain will be hesitant to answer vague questions.

  3. People will be discouraged from answering low quality questions and be encouraged to wait 12 hours to allow the community to vote to close and this then allows the natural process to unfold

    • either the OP will edit the question and it will be reopened and answerable.
    • the question will remain closed and unanswerable, and if so, any answers falling into this category do not provide the user with rep gain.
  4. Answers will not be automatically deleted, so any good information will remain on the site as a resource.

  5. Poor quality answers are more likely to be deleted by the owners as there will be downvote penalties and no occasional upvote reward to be an incentive for keeping the post there.


Benefits

  1. Reduces speedy answers to low quality questions
  2. Does not arbitrarily delete content from the site
  3. Allows for unclear questions to be changed, with minimal disruption to current answers
  4. Encourages speedy answers to be improved and edited to lift the vote embargo

Limitations

  1. Potential abuse of users continually morphing a question with the possibly of editing a question from an on-topic state to an off-topic state.

  2. This solution may not be suitable for all close vote reasons. Solutions would possibly need to be varied and tailored for differing close vote reasons.


Other less punitive option

Remove ALL votes (gains and losses) on these answers, except this then removes the incentive for users to self moderate their low quality posts with reputation losses.


The Proposal - Stage 2

Depending on the success of stage 1, discussion and decisions can then be made on implementing another similar or tailored solution for another closure reason.

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    I'm totally on board with eliminating rep gains from bad questions (although I don't think it should be limited to "unclear") but it's unlikely to ever happen. People get upset when they lose their pointz. And then you could argue that shoot-first answers to on-topic questions are just as much a problem... – Pekka Nov 19 '15 at 21:02
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    I'm kinda neutral about this (didn't cast a vote) but I really think we're trying to work around the problem rather than solve it. The real problem to me is in the questions -- the site has lost a lot of that professional exchange quality by growing too large and no longer being able to effectively control its content. The site even awards badges to answering bad questions -- it's difficult and even contradictory to reverse that incentive. From an answer level this site still rewards quality answers -- I've yet to see someone with an epic reputation that earned it by just providing sloppy... – DataMatters Nov 19 '15 at 21:07
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    ... answers to poor questions. Besides, it's a community site -- it takes other people to find even an answer to a poor question to be useful for it to be upvoted. Prevention here is probably a more effective strategy -- try to find ways to mitigate the number of bad questions. – DataMatters Nov 19 '15 at 21:08
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    @Ike, indeed there is something of a critical mass involved, but we're still kicking, at least for now. – Frédéric Hamidi Nov 19 '15 at 21:08
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    @Ike totally agree, I've edited the post. the goal behind this is to be able to delete poor quality questions (that are not improved). The biggest hindrance to this is upvoted answers. It's not for the sake of stopping people from answering questions. The goal is overall quality content. Which included good questions and matching good answers. – user3956566 Nov 19 '15 at 21:32
  • @Pekka웃 fastest gun in the west is a problem, but this is a view to dealing with one problem at a time, methodically and piecemeal. And I think how we deal with duplicates is another thing, as duplicates just increase the search results and are not necessarily bad per se. And it's not a retrospective proposal, so being upfront it's only future possible rep people won't gain, rather than loss now.. :) – user3956566 Nov 19 '15 at 21:42
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    Upvoted answers don't prevent manual deletion of questions, only automatic deletion. If manual deletion happens quickly enough, the reputation gain from the answers is removed. As much as I dislike seeing upvoted answers to bad questions, as much as I like the spirit of this proposal, I don't think tying closure to post vote invalidation is a good move. At the absolute minimum, I would want to require a substantial negative score on the question in addition to closure: -3 or less. – jscs Nov 19 '15 at 21:45
  • I don't think removing the rep from these answerers would dissuade them from answering such questions. They still get the feel good of helping someone, so they're likely to continue doing so. Chances are, they'll more often than not keep the rep anyway. – Kevin B Nov 19 '15 at 21:45
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    @JoshCaswell that is a very good suggestion! With such a feature request, if it is to be tweaked, do I leave the proposal as is and then it can be tweaked via an answer? Not sure how it works – user3956566 Nov 19 '15 at 21:46
  • How is it a good idea to remove reputation from upvotes and not from downvotes? To me it seems that it would be just as effective to remove all voting reputation with the incentive for not doing the action is that with no reputation changes people will be less willing to spend the time posting – Joe W Nov 19 '15 at 21:57
  • @JoeW yes true, that is why it is there as an option, and preferred for automatic deletion. I was just concerned that no downvotes will give the user no incentive to remove the post – user3956566 Nov 19 '15 at 22:02
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    I like this a bit more on re-reading it, but now here's another problem: what if the close voters are wrong? Are votes restored if the question is reopened? Are they restored only if it's reopened without being edited? – jscs Nov 20 '15 at 4:02
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    @JoshCaswell And of course if you restore the rep then you incentive anyone with 3k+ rep who answered to vote to reopen even if they know the question merits closure, just to get their rep. (And of course the rep whores who answer bad questions are often going to have 3k rep.) – Servy Nov 20 '15 at 4:12
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    @MrsEd Penalizing people because a question got closed, edited and then reopened is a bad idea when it is possible for anyone with 2k+ rep to be able to go in and edit a question at will or for the OP to add in additional information that was requested. If a bad question gets reopened it can get closed again and if a bad question gets edited into a good one that is a good thing for the site so there shouldn't be a problem with the answers anymore. – Joe W Nov 20 '15 at 13:29
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    @Magisch: 4 chances (edit+3*reopen) to pick up a sum total of just 2 well-meaning but bad reopen-votes from the queue? That's just about guaranteed. – Deduplicator Nov 20 '15 at 14:50
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There's a significant issue with this proposal that pre-supposes a question closed as unclear is unanswerable. Question clarity is not at all binary, it's a spectrum. So if 5 people find it unclear, does that actually prove that answerers are guessing or does it just mean that the people answering understand the problem better than the close voters?

(from here, I'm presumed to be talking about answerers who actually understand the question, rather than people guessing)

When you think about it, someone answering a question is in the best position to understand it. They understand the issue even better than the OP, since they're able to provide a solution. In this case, you're proposing a system that penalises people for understanding the question when their only mistake is not editing the question to be clearer to others. They might not even realise it's unclear to others if they haven't seen the close voting.

I think it would make more sense to encourage the answerers to fix these problems. Maybe when the question gets closed, answerers are notified. Asked that if they think it's unfair could they edit the question to fix it. There may be issues with that idea too, but at least it's not punitive on those who want to answer questions, and instead encourages improvement.

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    Also, users seem to be eager enough to "agree" with existing close-votes. One vote leads to more. – Cerbrus Nov 20 '15 at 14:23
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    @Cerbrus I think review queues exacerbate this, when people will close vote on tags they normally never browse. (if they aren't using filters) – SuperBiasedMan Nov 20 '15 at 14:24
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    No, it doesn't pre-suppose that the question is unanswerable, as shog9 said it's nearly always possible you can daniel your way to an answer (meaning guessing at a problem statement). Only that the question being unclear means it should not be answered until edited. – Deduplicator Nov 20 '15 at 14:38
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    @Cerbrus: That more leads to the wrong close-reason than wrong closing. Anyway, the same is true for reopen-queues... – Deduplicator Nov 20 '15 at 14:43
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    @Deduplicator: Unless the first closure vote is incorrect in the first place. – Cerbrus Nov 20 '15 at 14:44
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    @Cerbrus: I stay by my words: Pile-on might sometimes lead to wrong closing, but more likely to wrong reason. The former is easily corrected, the latter is unfortunate but a simple comment is mostly enough correction. And don't forget wrong reopening, accerbated by that queue. – Deduplicator Nov 20 '15 at 14:48
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    @Deduplicator: I don't disagree. – Cerbrus Nov 20 '15 at 14:48
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    @Deduplicator I moreso meant that it assumes voting as unclear was correct. As I said I'm trying to point out how people can understand a question that to others seems unclear. Also people close voting for the wrong reason does seem relevant to a proposal that applies only to a specific close reason. – SuperBiasedMan Nov 20 '15 at 15:01
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    well this idea of the closing vote being inaccurate is really a separate discussion. also I agree and disagree with the person answering it being in the best position to understand it. If it's unclear, really it shouldn't be answered. I answered a question like that myself recently and the answer made sense in some ways, but did not address the flawed logic within the question. Now it helped the OP. But in all honesty, Is it going to help people landing on the site? Not in the form it took. Only a few people understood part of the question (the experienced and the OP) and we could to be cont – user3956566 Nov 20 '15 at 18:27
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    not edit it to be clear as nobody truly understood the complete question. (the op wanted to know how to increment a loop - but there was huge flawed logic in using key paired values and initialising objects, which was skillyfully ignored.) And don't forget, user's are discouraged from editing questions beyond the original intent of the OP. all said , you've raised some interesting points, I don't mean to sound too critical..just throwing up the arguments. :) I really like the last paragraph. – user3956566 Nov 20 '15 at 18:30
  • @Deduplicator you first comment here Only that the question being unclear means it should not be answered until edited. puts it well, feel free to edit my question for clarity. I think the more refined it is, the better in a proposal like this. – user3956566 Nov 20 '15 at 18:33

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