57

This is a category of posts that appear to be rather difficult to handle by regular means, mostly for historical reasons.

There are not that many of these posts - just a few hundred. Because of that I suggest setting up a one-time community effort focusing on specific ways to address issues in these answers.

This SEDE query lists posts to focus on:

How can I help?

Below are points you are expected to keep in mind while reviewing and acting on these posts.

Do not flag

These posts are well-known as troublesome to flag so you'd be better off avoiding wasting your time and risking flag declines.

If you spot an issue that looks impossible to address by ways suggested below, just bring it to SOCVR or to this meta discussion.

Check if the question is an off-topic / recommendation

It is important to start with this because according to another castle guidance in cases like this you should focus on question, not the answer:

Don't get me wrong, it's still a bad answer - but when the question is kinda asking for bad answers this is to be expected. Close or flag the question and move on - this is much more efficient than hanging around to babysit it by deleting every crap answer that inevitably shows up...

In the past, community norms were not that firm, and some off-topic recommendation questions could leak in and even gain some popularity. Respectively, answers to these questions could get a deservedly high score if they addressed the question particularly well (today purists could complain that question shouldn't be allowed to start with, but back then, things were different).

If the question turns out to be of that kind, first check if it can be edited into proper shape without invalidating the answers. "Recommend me a tool / tutorial to do $something" sometimes can be rephrased into "How to do $something" etc. If such a "salvaging edit" looks possible, do it and skip to the next section of this post which focuses on the answer.

If the question looks like it's unsalvageablely off-topic / recommendation, act on it as it deserves - vote down, close, delete.

If you observe that the question has an unusually high score or large number of views, bring it to SOCVR or to this meta discussion; it can be a candidate for historical lock, for Atwood's cleanup, or for moderator-aided deletion.

At this point, feel free to skip the rest of this post. You are not prohibited to proceed and try to improve the answer but please keep in mind that it's possible that your effort will go in vain in case a question gets deleted.

Check if the link content summary can be easily edited into the answer

Note that this assumes that you checked the question and found it to be on-topic.

A reasonable question with a bland, link-only answer sitting at a unusually high +10 can often mean that a careless author just didn't bother to describe content worthy of +30...+50 so that it only got upvotes from readers who clicked the link and were diligent enough to get back to the answer and vote (they'd better edit in the summary of what they read but oh well).

If this is the case, edit a link content summary into the answer and consider it done. When editing, make sure to keep the link and make it easy for readers to see that the added text is based on / quoted from the link - for proper .

(For those concerned that it's "unfair to do the work for lazy answerers", don't you worry - the answerer punished themselves already. If they added that summary when posting, their answer could get hot, canonical, it could gain tens or hundreds upvotes - but it's too late now. The five to ten upvotes that it may get because of bump caused by your late edit are nothing compared to what it could have gotten if answerer did it right the first time.)

If the answer looks unsalvageable, bring it to SOCVR or here. Once again, do not flag, because this is unlikely to help.

Related:

  • 7
    thanks to Shog and SOCVR folks for help in preparing this cleanup - much appreciated – gnat Sep 19 '16 at 18:38
  • 5
    ""Recommend me a tool / tutorial to do $something" sometimes can be rephrased into "How to do $something" etc." True, but very often doing this results in a question that is too broad. I don't disagree with the edit but people performing such edit should be aware that they've probably not saved the question from closure, and if they do have close-vote privileges they should still vote to close it. – Louis Sep 19 '16 at 18:55
  • @Louis this is hopefully covered by explanation that question is to be edited "into proper shape". As for that brief schematic example I made, it is intentionally incomplete - I limited it that way because "salvaging edits" are sort of an art and if I tried to make some "short (and still incomplete) introduction" into this, it would easily obscure the rest of that post – gnat Sep 19 '16 at 19:09
  • 14
    Who the heck votes to close this?! – user247702 Sep 19 '16 at 20:37
  • 4
    @Stijn I guess folks who want that meta drama about old answers continue? Moderators declining flags, flaggers beating moderators with that big stick of another castle guidance, votes flowing up and down, stuff like that. Some probably believe it would be sooo boring to get rid of this – gnat Sep 19 '16 at 20:48
  • 13
    The nice thing about old questions in this vein, @Louis, is that you often have years of supporting information to help you suss out a focused question... As opposed to new ones, where you're left to guess based on whatever is in the post itself. Granted, if the top answer is naught but a link to a bookshop selling The Art of Computer Programming... It probably is too broad. – Shog9 Sep 19 '16 at 20:57
  • @Shog9 regarding that query we use, does it ignore answers in historically locked questions? I checked query code and couldn't figure that – gnat Sep 20 '16 at 11:48
  • it doesn't have "locked" anywhere, so it's safe to assume it doesn't. – Braiam Sep 20 '16 at 11:57
  • 2
    Good to see this initiative. Happy to hear that you seem to have run out of closets to clean at home. – user663031 Sep 20 '16 at 12:06
  • 4
    ...and - there we go, you can see these folks in close banner and (just in case if this will reopen) in revision history. Hello folks who cast funny votes for "does not appear to seek input and discussion from the community", we know who you are! – gnat Sep 20 '16 at 20:08
  • 1
    It doesn't, @gnat. It could easily ignore answers to locked questions, but I don't have a way to differentiate HL from other locks using public data; I suppose there's not much that can be done with answers to questions locked for other reasons though either. This eliminates 15 answers. – Shog9 Sep 20 '16 at 21:17
  • 7
    @gnat - This is not a discussion, it is a directive. Where is the community input? This question resembles a rant more than it seeks input, as it is fully biased towards already doing the task it purports to "discuss". Even Shog warned I recommend reviewing these with a somewhat skeptical eye, and that hasn't been a strong point historically from the meta effect, especially not when you are clearly leveraging it here without any more than a nod to a single "you can discuss it" note, versus there actually being community consensus supporting this. – Travis J Sep 21 '16 at 21:02
  • 2
    Might want to add tags to the query so people can see what they are qualified/interested in fixing. – AbraCadaver Sep 22 '16 at 15:49
  • 1
    @AbraCadaver That's a very good idea and I just edited the progress answer with the first tag of the question (which is the tag having the most questions). – Tunaki Sep 25 '16 at 22:04
  • 1
    Almost two years later, the query gives 142 results again – is another round of cleanup necessary? – O.O.Balance Jul 1 '18 at 7:16
18

To track progress, this a dump of the results of the SEDE query. The questions that have been handled by the community can be removed from this answer as we go. Example:

  • False positive;
  • Salvaged the linked Q&A through editing;
  • Question was locked or closed or deleted

Also, a query to look for closed questions and review them for potential deletion, salvaging edit, or historical lock.

Open questions

wcf           https://stackoverflow.com/a/6670410 WCF with ninject example

Weekly progress summary: number of answers to handle is

  • down from 118 to 4 in the 4th week
  • down from 200 to 118 in the 3rd week
  • down from 360 to 200 in the 2nd week
  • down from 500 to 360 in the 1st week
  • 5
    ^^^ thanks to Tunaki for idea and implementation of this progress report! – gnat Sep 20 '16 at 12:00
  • No direct links? (Go ahead, call me a lazy sod.) – usr2564301 Sep 20 '16 at 20:56
  • 1
    @Rad Trade off between not cluttering up the answer and tracking the questions. Open to ideas :) – Tunaki Sep 20 '16 at 21:06
  • 8
    @Tunaki You can use <pre>...</pre>. This way we can use <a href="..">link descriptiion</a> inside this section. With little help of editors supporting replacement with regex like Notepad++ we can replace ^(\S+) with <a href="\1">\1</a> to make links active, or ^(\S+)\s+(.*) with <a href="\1">\2</a> to make descriptions a link (but for some reasons last 3 lines didn't want to be printed as links - at least in preview - so I picked first version). – Pshemo Sep 20 '16 at 22:43
  • 2
    That is awesome, thanks @Pshemo! – Tunaki Sep 20 '16 at 22:45
  • Link-only answers that are upvoted are obviously good, and indicate that the question is crap. The upvoters are agreeing with the idea that the question is fundamentally about finding offsite resources which can be easily googled. The only thing wrong with the answers is that the links may go out of date, like the "External References" sections in Wikipedia pages. – Kaz Sep 21 '16 at 5:37
  • 1
    @Kaz I am not sure I understand you. What I observed in about dozen edits I did so far for this cleanup certainly was not the way you describe it. Questions looked good to me, and the only issue was that answer was missing a summary from the referred link. Upvotes looked like rewarding good question as well as good content at the referred link. Link-only content gave no indications other than answer is in a need for editing – gnat Sep 21 '16 at 5:53
  • @gnat agreed, although I think there are some exceptions in the list. This one caught my attention for example: stackoverflow.com/a/44548 (.Net ESB's) - it has multiple link-only answers, and is asking for tool recommendations and is closed as such. Removing the one answer achieves very little if you ask me. – Gimby Sep 21 '16 at 9:27
  • @Gimby these are not exceptions really but part of what is expected to be picked by the query: "Check if the question is an off-topic / recommendation". Per my observations about 10-20% answers in the query lead to questions like that – gnat Sep 21 '16 at 10:01
  • Many of the questions are either deleted or edited. You can <strike><a ....>Title of Q</strike> it to strike through it. – Tushar Sep 21 '16 at 15:54
  • @Tushar I simply remove such answers from the list, and per my reading of revisions history other folks do the same – gnat Sep 21 '16 at 15:58
  • Ohh. Revision history is an option too. But very few users bother to look. Also, who would like to go through 10/20+ revisions. – Tushar Sep 21 '16 at 16:06
  • 2
    @Tushar as far as I can tell the idea of removal is to keep the list of only answers worth looking at. Everything that was handled just goes away – gnat Sep 21 '16 at 16:28
  • 2
    @QPaysTaxes I made a little userscript that can update this answer automatically at every SEDE update. – Tunaki Oct 5 '16 at 7:11
  • 1
    @gnat I pinged the OP of the accepted answer on that last open question. I think the question isn't that bad but the answers need love. If they don't respond, maybe w have to take up the editing. – rene Oct 13 '16 at 11:13
0

Posts where moderator involvement looks desirable.

Highly upvoted links to other SO questions

(typically, links to duplicate targets)

Desperate cases

Original link is dead, attempt to recover content with Wayback Machine failed, answerer was asked in comments to update and didn't respond.

Recommendation questions with high views

(candidates to historical lock)

  • 1
    Of the list of highly-voted answers that link to other questions, we've marked as duplicate and converted the ones I've crossed-out in the list above. The others, however, consist of more information than just a link, and I believe could remain as answers. While short, they do answer the question asked, and then use the link to point to additional detail. – Brad Larson Oct 5 '16 at 14:33
  • About the that one is really weird, a word "No" refers to the the same question, I think it was just an attempt to circumvent the minimum character limit... something has to be added, so I guess they said to themselves, why not a link to the question itself. – Tunaki Oct 5 '16 at 15:01
  • @BradLarson thanks for helping in here! regarding post marked weird in this list, one example of "No" kind answer was previously discussed here - what's your take on this? – gnat Oct 6 '16 at 6:26
  • How can I voice my opposition to have any question locked? – Braiam Oct 12 '16 at 20:53
  • @Braiam if you're talking about questions involved in this cleanup then probably it would be most convenient to post a separate answer here and suggest something else instead of locking. For example, delete, or leave the question alone, or edit and reopen etc – gnat Oct 12 '16 at 21:38
  • 1
    I removed the weird link. – Cœur Nov 22 '17 at 6:07
-6

One thought, during the cleanup, if a action is to delete the post, then better look for any bounties that were given. Or else there would be a noticable reduction in reputation of the user who received the bounty value.

Example : one of the link from the above answer has a bounty award to the answer. Such post shouldn't be deleted. I hope this is being already taken care of, but didn't see it.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/780837/what-is-a-good-linux-ide-for-code-completion

  • "Linux IDE" question was suggested for mod attention to consider historical lock in another answer here – gnat Oct 10 '16 at 14:49
  • 2
    If the post had more than 60 days on the site, reputation awarded isn't lost... and frankly I would spend all my reputation if it improves the average quality. – Braiam Oct 12 '16 at 20:51
  • 1
    @Braiam FWIW rep earned from bounty always goes away when post is deleted - it's handled differently from rep of upvotes. And I saw them saying that this is the right thing to do: "It was a cr@ppy question that was looking for recommendations. The bounty should have been manually removed and the question closed a long time ago. You really should never have been awarded it in the first place..." – gnat Oct 13 '16 at 6:19

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