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This is a question for SE staff, or perhaps current or past moderators with a great deal of experience who've discussed this specific text with SE staff. Ideally, it's a question for the person or people who wrote the quoted text, or for Shog9. I'm not asking for community members' interpretation of the text. I'm asking about SE's own policy.

In How to Answer, it says:

Have the same problem?

Still no answer to the question, and you have the same problem? Help us find a solution by researching the problem, then contribute the results of your research and anything additional you’ve tried as a partial answer. That way, even if we can’t figure it out, the next person has more to go on. You can also vote up the question or set a bounty on it so the question gets more attention.

I recently had this quoted to me by someone who claimed it means that people should post incomplete answers to questions, e.g., in an answer box. (And I can see how it would be read that way, esp. being in How to Answer.)

Is it the policy of SE that that help center text is meant to encourage people to post incomplete answers (e.g., in answer boxes)? Even though, being incomplete, they don't answer the question? Or is it meant to encourage people to edit the question with the results of their further research, etc.?

This question is very similar to Why does the Help center seem to indicate “Me too!” is a valid answer? and somewhat to You're doing it wrong: A plea for sanity in the Low Quality Posts queue. The key distinction is that those are about how to respond to incomplete answers (e.g., in the low-quality review queue and/or with regard to NAA flags). I'm asking what the help is actually trying to say. Someone at SE wrote that text. What's the intent of it?

Looking for an answer specific to Stack Overflow (although if it also addresses other SE sites, that's fine). I can see how the answer may vary from SE site to SE site.

Tagging: After a great deal of thought, I've concluded that as I'm looking for an answer from SE, this is , not as I originally tagged it. was misleading (my bad), I'm not asking the community what that text means, I'm asking SE. The feature I'm asking for assistance with is the answer box: Should I post incomplete answers in it?

  • Isn't it meant to encourage you to share your research so others do not have to repeat it in order for someone to someday actually get an answers? – NathanOliver- Reinstate Monica Jun 9 '16 at 16:32
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    @NathanOliver: The question is how: By posting an incomplete answer? Or by editing the question and/or commenting with details of further research? I find the idea of SE promoting partially-complete answers as completely contrary to my perception of the SE model; as CodeCaster said: "By posting additional research as a "partial answer", whatever that may be, you're treating answers as forum posts, and I don't like that one bit." But jpmc26 reads it the other way. – T.J. Crowder Jun 9 '16 at 16:34
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    Closevoters: Again, there is a key difference, and my question (what is that text meant to encourage) is not answered by that question's answers. I've read them all. I'd really like to know the answer to my question. – T.J. Crowder Jun 9 '16 at 16:39
  • I think the reason this got closed is because the top answer on the dupe target says, "then it's fine to post in an answer." (I'm sympathetic, though. I've had things dupe closed on meta that I didn't really think should be, too.) – jpmc26 Jun 9 '16 at 17:04
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    @jpmc26: Possibly, yeah. (And thanks.) The thing is, that's just the opinion of a random mid-rep user (and ~60 people agreeing with ~10 disagreeing). While interesting, it's not an answer to what I asked. I asked what the text is supposed to encourage. I mean, taking SE in the direction of the quagmire of half-complete answers as official policy, that would be pretty shocking to me. – T.J. Crowder Jun 9 '16 at 17:12
  • Just don't worry about it, and don't let the moderators get you down. If it's an answer to one part of the question, or if it's a possible answer subject to further investigation, just say so. It doesn't matter what the moderator thinks, so long as you are helping the person who asked the question. – Michael Kay Jun 10 '16 at 11:29
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    @MichaelKay: The problem with that is that, if adopted en mass, we end up with the morass of unhelpful half-complete (at best) replies-rather-than-answers that characterized the programming discussion forums that Stack Overflow was specifically designed to avoid being. :-) – T.J. Crowder Jun 10 '16 at 11:32
4

I think I may have covered this on the answer I gave to my question (which you already linked):

Some types of "incomplete" answers are completely acceptable. It just depends on how incomplete it is.

It's also important to look at the question. If it is too broad, it should be closed, not answered partially. And if it's not too broad, why not answer it completely?

Nevertheless, here's a good example:

A question asks for a regex that will format strings that meet a certain criteria. (Formatting a string to have two decimal places, but only if the string is entirely numeric would be a concrete example that is very reasonably scoped.) It would be acceptable for an answer to provide a regex that does the formatting, but on any string it is fed. It fails to answer the question completely, but the remaining portion of the problem is trivial to solve and is likely well covered by existing Q&A's elsewhere.

Something to keep in mind is that the wording is probably the same across all sites. Think about a site like Skeptics: you need to do actual research to answer those questions, and sometimes you don't have enough data to make a conclusion. The partial answer will provide a basis for future research, which is valuable.

I think the main problem with providing "research" answers on Stack Overflow is that progress happens sequentially. Unlike my Skeptics example (facts are facts), the "progress" may not lead to a solution, and therefore can be invalidated by a different, complete answer.

The other thing to remember is that users are given specific guidance when answering:

Your Answer

Thanks for contributing an answer to Stack Overflow!

  • Please be sure to answer the question. Provide details and share your research!

But avoid

  • Asking for help, clarification, or responding to other answers.
  • Making statements based on opinion; back them up with references or personal experience.

To learn more, see our tips on writing great answers.

While it still seems to be slightly ambiguous, there is more details on when an answer qualifies for deletion:

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed.

This includes answers that are:

  • commentary on the question or other answers
  • asking another, different question
  • “thanks!” or “me too!” responses
  • exact duplicates of other answers
  • barely more than a link to an external site
  • not even a partial answer to the actual question
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    Which I appreciate your input, I'm looking for an answer from SE about what that text is meant to convey, not answers from other people interpreting it. I've edited the question to make that clear, sorry it was unclear before. – T.J. Crowder Jun 10 '16 at 6:30
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    SE policy is detemined by community consensus. We are the moderators of SE. – Polygnome Jun 10 '16 at 20:30
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    @Polygnome: Not really. The community largely administers SE policy, but the community only sets SE policy when SE agrees with it, and not when SE disagrees with it. See this and this as two examples. Particularly not for something so fundamental as whether incomplete answers should be posted. – T.J. Crowder Jun 11 '16 at 7:59
  • It is true that SE has the authority to override any community consensus. And yeah, when it comes to the software, we can't do much, because that is the discretion of SE. But we can reach consensus and apply it on how we want to interpret that entry from the help center. – Polygnome Jun 11 '16 at 8:05
  • @Polygnome: (I won't get notified if you don't @ tag me) Sure, but my question is how is it intended, not how shall we interpret it. – T.J. Crowder Jun 12 '16 at 15:40
1

There's a saying that when the manual makes no sense you should just check the sources and figure it out. Sadly, we don't have access to the sources, but we have other documentations that not only describe the sources but do so in a way that's difficult to misinterpret (also, since they are technical, can be verified).

So, how does the system treat questions with answers differently from questions with no answers?

The most obvious is how roomba treats these questions, namely:

If the question is more than 30 days old, and ...

  • has no answers

If the question is more than 365 days old, and ...

  • has no answers

That means that the system doesn't delete questions with an answer (score independent).

Another is the Community poking questions:

Randomly poke old unanswered questions* every hour so they get some attention

* Questions with at least 30 days of no activity, at least one answer scoring zero, and no answers scoring above that. Questions that are locked or closed will not be bumped. The Community User will only bump a maximum of one question per hour.

That means that questions with answers so long they are 0 scored are given some attention (through, users tend to ignore Community bumped questions).

Another is the definition of "answered" question. Basically, the system counts every answer in the site statistics, but that doesn't mean that the questions are "answered". Only answers with score >=1 or accepted make the question "answered". That's why you see in the "unanswered" tab questions with 1 answer and no answer. There's another tab called "no answers" too.

But, how about the user behavior with questions with(out) answers? Users tend, to some extent to look for questions with no answers, so they have less competition and can reap more benefits. How many of us don't have a intags:mine answers:0 bookmarked?

Well, what can you interpret from all this? My interpretation is that the system makes questions that have 0 score answers very unlikely to be answered by regulars, yet they aren't automatically cleared so people find themselves in the same situation as this xkcd. The former because these questions tend to be ignored or outright discarded by the users that are willing to spend some effort answering questions and the latter because we try so hard to make people not to post duplicates that they feel aversion to ask it again (or so we hope), giving it no chance to get seen for the bigger pool of users that watch /newest. Also, since we are recommended to "upvote answers that solved our problem" but these don't actually "solve our problems", these questions enter into a limbo in which they are not answered and the system makes sure it stays like that.

So, if the system acts like this, why does the help center recommend such a counter-intuitive action? A bit of history: the now known help center was created circa 2013 which contains the same text you quote, but before that it wasn't the "Help Center" on the /help url, but the FAQ in the /faq. I was thinking "Aha! Maybe this is just artifacts of the old FAQ"; sadly, the FAQ didn't mention this. Even comments were possible back then in 2010 so it wasn't a "substitute for comments". So where did this blob come from? The only other reference I can find was askamiga.com which seems to actually have copied from us.

Although I can't know the intent of whoever wrote that, the system itself doesn't recognize those as actual answers and I find the blob to promote detrimental actions for those that ask, those that answer and those that look for answers.

0

This really seems rather simple to me. (I'm aware you're looking for staff guidance, but since none has come, I think I should at least throw in my two cents, especially given that I was the "someone" who quoted it to you.)

  • You should not edit the original post with those kinds of details. You may inadvertently change the question to something completely different than the problem the original poster experienced.
  • Nonetheless, you have useful information to share.
  • So the only logical place to put it is in an answer.

Also consider the fact that such a post could become an answer. Maybe your findings will help the OP identify new information that leads to the final solution, and a modest edit to your answer could turn it into a full answer. If you originally put them in the question, would you then edit them out of the question and put them into an answer?

Or what if your findings turn out to be a dead end? Are you going to edit them out of the question if someone finds a better approach?

Going even further, what if all you want to do is demonstrate that a particular approach, which may have been time consuming to implement or test, doesn't work? Posting that finding would save a lot of readers a good chunk of time, guiding others to attempt other approaches instead of that one and thus eventually leading to an answer.

The bottom line is just that this sort of content is useful but doesn't belong in the question, so it can be put in answers. All that said, given all the limitations on scope SO has in place, situations where this occurs should be exceedingly rare.

  • "So the only logical place to put it is in an answer" Well, this is where we differ; answers are for answers. The logical place may be either A) The question (if you're quite sure you're not at odds with what the OP's dealing with), or B) A comment. Comments are emphemeral, but only removed when they stop having value. Partial answer comments have value up until a proper answer is completed. – T.J. Crowder Jun 19 '16 at 7:13
  • "...situations where this occurs should be exceedingly rare." We can agree on that, anyway. :-) – T.J. Crowder Jun 19 '16 at 7:13
  • @T.J.Crowder Except those finding shouldn't be ephemeral. They should last at least until a complete answer is found. Not to mention a comment is unlikely to be sufficient space to document a somewhat involved attempt at solving a problem. – jpmc26 Jun 19 '16 at 7:14
  • @T.J.Crowder Maybe we're thinking differently about the nature of the content this Help topic is attempting to address. We still want these posts to be high quality. What I'm envisioning is someone spends several hours researching, testing, and generally beating their head against the brick wall of a difficult problem. They don't ultimately find a solution, but in the process, they generate MVCEs and gather a lot of relevant information. This is all great content, and just throwing it away after the failed attempt means someone else will probably waste several hours going down the same road. – jpmc26 Jun 19 '16 at 7:19
  • "Except those finding shouldn't be ephemeral." Right, I said above: "Partial answer comments have value up until a proper answer is completed." Re thinking differently about it: If someone does all that, I would expect it to be in the question, clearly identified as follow-up research by another party. But at that point, we're well into truly amazingly rare territory. The help center text is not nearly scoped enough for us to assume that that's what it's talking about, in my view. – T.J. Crowder Jun 19 '16 at 7:22

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