Hot answers tagged

61

Here are some general rules that should be followed. Follow this general outline: BOLD items are required. Title of the product with a link to the download/main page. Quote the site's product summary. Add any pictures that are relevant to the question. If it's not installed using a normal installation file, or package manager, then give instructions on ...


51

Some things are simply impossible - however, it's useful to say why not (or better yet, how it could be done, but how incredibly difficult it is). If we had a question like I need to alter my turbo enfrobulator using the degobulation widget on frobster 2.0 - how do I do this? You can say Or you can explain that you can't enfrobulate from the ...


32

Optimally, voting is how the correct answer is recognized. In practice, though, sometimes people vote up answers that are long just because they look thorough. I notice that, in this case, neither answer has even a single link. The information might be true, but at the moment it's not backed up by credible sources. In many cases, links aren't necessary ...


29

As pointed out in a comment to this answer, a software license is a contract, as opposed to a law. The contract is, or isn't, enforceable, depending on the law(s) that apply where the user who asked the question is located. While it is technically feasible to determine where a connection from a user to this website originated from, it is impossible to be ...


29

I skimmed through your answering history, and I noticed that many of your answers that still have zero votes are in response to questions that are either already answered or posted by very-low-rep users. Sometimes owners of already-solved questions will only upvote new answers that significantly help them in their situations. If the situation has long been ...


27

Link-only answers are never fine. If you need to link to a SuperUser question or answer in order to answer a question, vote or flag to close the question as a duplicate of that question. If linking to the other question does not provide enough information, but you want to provide the same type of answer to express that it's one possible way of doing that, ...


25

If what the OP asked for is clearly impossible, it is acceptable to state so in a full answer, as long as a reasonable explanation is provided. If you just want to say that it's impossible, it's not worthy of an answer as it is little more than noise. At Stack Exchange, we want to keep the quality of answers high, so an answer that states that the desired ...


23

Without context, you could interpret the response like you did. But let's be clear: moderators are not exempt from any rules we have here—whether it's about quality or behavior in general. Feel free to flag a post when you see something wrong. We occasionally have to delete (older) posts of other moderators for quality problems or other issues. And we try ...


23

I've occasionally noticed, and commented on and downvoted lower quality, link-only answers, and you've definitely got a lot of rep - and well, if I thought one of your answers wasn't good, I'd consider downvoting and commenting. Not everyone might do the latter. In your case these would be link-only answers, with some older, bountied questions if I recall ...


20

If you don't want your government to be run by people you hate, go vote. If you don't want that only 1% of all members get to decide who looks credible and who doesn't, go vote. But it's not that simple with Stack Exchange, is it? We need voting to make people see what is quality content and what isn't. So if people don't vote, contributions become less ...


20

Answers should be quality. Things like references, proper formatting, etc. should be included to aim for quality (goes for Questions too IMO). Sometimes I'm not inclined to leave a quality answer, so I just leave (what has turned out to be) an answer in the comments alone. I helped, the user likes it. If someone else wants to come along and write a ...


20

Some spammers are getting into the habit of posting almost useful answers in order to disguise their spam. This is a difficult call though. 99% of the time these types of answer are spam but occasionally it is someone just trying to be helpful while getting a little exposure. The difference between the two is that a spammer tends to almost hide the link ...


20

Leave a comment under the answer That would be enough to inform future reader who is interested in the tool that it is no longer available. That would be enough to inform the community to downvote the answer as in current state the answer is wrong That would be enough to inform the answerer that the link gone broken, and whether they want to fix it or not ...


18

The new ransomware answer I just hammered out the above answer, which overviews how ransomware works, what to do, and how to avoid it in the future. Most importantly, I linked to this Google Doc (from this Reddit thread), which is a list of ransomware variants, their characteristics, and (when available) links to the decryptors. Feel free to suggest ...


17

This has been discussed/requested many times on Meta Stack Overflow. The canonical response is here: Would it be possible to have a "community accepted" feature? The request is marked status-declined, under the premise that the question with the most upvotes is effectively the community-accepted answer. Actually marking an accepted answer is the ...


16

I'd try commenting first, and editing - in situations like this I'd try to fix up one or two of them, and commenting politely about the fixes I've made, and why that is. If they're truely horrible, I'd spend the reputation to downvote or well.. just comment on how the answer could be better. If it gets to the point where its really too much to bear, hop on ...


15

This question could have been slightly rewritten to be more constructive and a little less open-ended. I think the question is definitely salvageable, and would suggest editing it rather than closing it. The answer wasn't mean-spirited, but portions of it are certainly off-topic. It was funny, though, and also contained a serious answer near the end. In ...


15

To make this as precise as possible: YES, please. If you have the time to check the linked site and distill the most essential parts, then post them here, you've done us a big favor. First of all, you're making the answer more useful, and you can show others how it's done – leading by example. In the long run, people will see these edits and know how to ...


15

The general rule is that you should flag for moderator attention only if there is something that you can't handle yourself. So ideally, with your new privileges, you shouldn't need to flag anymore. Downvote and vote to delete.* But: We have to remember that we're still a very small site compared to Stack Overflow in terms of reputation. On SO, the number ...


14

I would say post better answers, but I honestly can't find any answers that I'd take offense with. I just guess you answered questions which are low visibility, and where the user hasn't bothered to test the answers.


14

It depends. If the answer is nothing but personal experience, but results in it completely solving the original problem then it is definitely an answer. I've seen this before. When I last used FlugelBinder3000 software I had to ratchet the wurzle and everything just worked. Is definitely an answer. It solves the problem. What more could you want? It ...


13

Two solutions come to mind: If the question is crap, deal with it like we would do with any other. Vote to close or delete right away. If there really are high rep users who repeatedly answer bad questions with their one line of code, then let the deletion be a sign for them — don't answer crap questions! If you want to conserve your reputation and have ...


13

No. Moderators get no reputation bonus for their actions in any way. The only way moderators get rep is the same ways that normal users get rep, by getting upvotes on questions and answers, deleting answers is not one of those ways.


12

The existing wiki answer has great discussion and comments, but I believe the embedded example conflicts with current site standards. The example would be a response to a request for a software list, which would be off-topic (it is a long general description of features and benefits that is not specific to the question and does not provide an actual ...


12

Its definitely fine if you know it gets migrated. As for against the FAQ, I usually tend to hint at an answer when I comment to why I am close voting a post. Some questions are actually interesting enough that I post an answer, then ask, and occasionally when I really KNOW I ought to comment, but it's too long, I've been guilty of posting it as a community ...


12

The replies here just discuss whether to give actual information on a question if that might be illegal. Regardless of that debate - I don't believe that saying you shouldn't do this is an answer, however you certainly can post it as a comment to warn the poster that he might be asking to break the law (as he may not know such 'illegal' actions that are ...


11

Those are always edge cases. I would be hesitant to provide a simple rule on how to deal with these kinds of answers, although one thing should be clear: "You cannot do it" can be a valid answer. However in this particular instance it's clearly this: It doesn't solve the real problem. If OP asks "Is possible", he really means "How do I do <XYZ>". ...


11

Your answer may be correct, because of your ability to clearly interpret the language used in the question as it applies to the program, but it's far from guaranteed that a local expert of the program under discussion will come along and be able to answer the question in one fell swoop. In case you didn't notice, there are many questions on this site which ...


11

I can imagine a few reasons: High reputation users have acquired a lot of knowledge—not only in a technical sense, but knowledge that helps them find an answer to their own problems more quickly. Writing good answers requires thorough research, and after contributing hundreds of answers you might be more efficient at solving your own problems, hence no need ...


11

If you don't have a lot of time but want to be helpful: Comment on the question, leaving a link to the older question Otherwise, I'd go for: Quote that answer (or reword it, possibly making it more valuable) and flag older (more specific) question as a duplicate Generally, links to other posts on Super User are not as prone to link rot as external ...


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