18

When one reviews answers to old questions, one can only see the question and the answer, so it can't be determined on that screen if the question has already been answered. Partial answers are supposed to be welcome and encouraged where helpful (i.e., in situations where the question has not already been answered).

I reviewed this answer which was a productive, if elementary, answer towards the question's second part. It answered the more elementary "How do I get the first letter..." part of the "How do I get the first letter of each element?". But I got audited for selecting "nothing is needed", because it was (unbeknownst to me) a redundant answer.

My question is, should one be expected to always open up another tab/window to check if the answer is redundant? It would make more sense to include all necessary information to correctly review the subject on the same page.

7
  • 1
    Side note: "Our system has identified this post as possible spam; please review carefully" on post that does not look like a spam is good indication of audit... At very least you should review carefully as suggested (opening question in separate window is a way to do so) Oct 11 '18 at 16:51
  • 4
    I'm only asking because the whole auditing system seems to be based on the assumption that the reviewer doesn't just open it in a new tab just to see what the consensus is. If every reviewer is encouraged to do that, It kind of defeats itself.
    – Ruzihm
    Oct 11 '18 at 16:59
  • 2
    Depends on the queue you're in. In "Late Answers" you were in you have to, no other way you could for example see that it is a copy-paste of somebody else's answer. In the "Suggested Edits" it is rare to need to, albeit that comments sometimes are relevant. Others are in between. Looking is always a good idea. Oct 11 '18 at 17:15
  • 5
    @Ruzihm The auditing system is based on the assumption that if the community universally reacts to a post positively then it is a good question, and that if the community universally reacts to a post negatively then it is a bad question. That's... pretty much it.
    – user4639281
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:42
  • Possible duplicate of How is this a bad answer?
    – gnat
    Oct 13 '18 at 12:51
  • see also: While reviewing “The Late answers” should we compare it to other answers? at MSE. "When you see a post like "I am having same problem, have you resolved it?" you don't need to look at anything else to make a decision, you just vote down and flag it..."
    – gnat
    Oct 13 '18 at 12:52
  • 2
19

If there is any doubt about what I'm reviewing I will always open a new tab or skip.

That's why there's a "link" to the post.

Enter image description here

Sometimes it's clear from viewing a post within the review tab that it needs to closed, deleted, or it's ok. Other times it will be unclear why it's in the review queue. That's where the context of the post helps to understand what put it in the queue.

I wish more people would open the posts in a new tab; there'd be fewer poor reviews and fewer review bans.

7
  • 7
    "I wish more people would open the posts in a new tab, there'd be less poor reviews and less review bans." That would be true, in the sense that people would always know whether a post is an audit before taking action, as you'll immediately see that the post is already deleted. That doesn't necessarily mean that people are more likely to take the correct course of action on posts that aren't audits.
    – Servy
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:05
  • 10
    @Servy if a reviewer bother to open a new tab, they're at least halfway interested in what they're reviewing. It's a step away from robo reviewing. We cannot enforce everyone to use the system well, but we can only encourage those who are interested.
    – user3956566
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:22
  • 8
    You have your causation backwards. People who care about reviewing well are more likely to do additional research, beyond what's in /review, than a robo reviewer. That doesn't mean forcing robo reviewers to open the page in a new tab, say, because they're doing so for the sole purpose of checking for audits, will result in them caring more about the quality of reviews, or even reviewing any better. Getting people to click more links won't make them care, getting them to care may result in them clicking more links.
    – Servy
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:26
  • 5
    @Servy no one is forcing anyone to do anything. Nothing is backwards. The OP asked a question, I gave a frank answer. There's not perfect solution. People are often genuinely wanting to know how to use the site. I'm giving my advice. Nothing more, nothing less. How to be a better reviewer. I cannot stop roboreviewers. Not today. I don't have the answer.
    – user3956566
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:36
  • 4
    You said that you wished more people would open the post in a new tab, and that it would cause there to be better reviews. That is backwards. The act of opening the post up in a new tab is generally not making people review better. A bad reviewer spending more time opening up posts in a new tab isn't going to become a better reviewer, just because of that. You're giving your advice, and I'm giving my conflicting advice, and explaining why I don't feel yours is productive.
    – Servy
    Oct 11 '18 at 17:43
  • 5
    I wish more people would open the posts in a new tab Isn't it kind of ironic to wish people would break out of the defined process so that they can be more effective? Maybe fixing what's broken with the process would be better than hoping people realize what's broken and find the workaround by themselves.
    – nvoigt
    Oct 12 '18 at 14:45
  • 2
    @nvoigt it is not a hard and fast defined process. There is an inbuilt link to the post in situ with the review item. I would say that opening another tab when unsure is part of the process. Reviewing effectively takes time.
    – user3956566
    Oct 12 '18 at 22:36
11

You shouldn't always need to open up every post outside of review, but there are lots of things that you should be looking out for that are red flags, even if they're not actually necessarily inappropriate, and seeing those red flags should be signs that you should look more closely. One red flag is an incomplete answer to an old question, particularly when you see other answers (because you are shown how many other answers there are).

But at the end of the day you're expected to take the right course of action. Whether you're able to accurately determine the correct course of action using just what is shown in review (which many people find is often the case), or whether you feel the need to do additional research in order to come to the correct decision, is up to you. If you find that you're not good at determining which posts are, or might be, problematic, just from review, then you might decide that you frequently need to do additional research, even in situations where other people don't.

5

The answer, as many things in life: it depends.

If the information presented isn't enough to do a sensible review, your duty as reviewer is to look for the information, or to allow others reviewers to do so if you feel inclined to not use your time.

Now on your specific assertions:

When one reviews answers to old questions, one can only see the question and the answer, so it can't be determined on that screen if the question has already been answered

That's not all the information presented. At the right you also see how many answers are present, if it's accepted, when it was last active, etc. You are also presented comments under the post, dates of edits (if it was edited). In other words, most of the information you will have about the answer in the context of the question.

Partial answers are supposed to be welcome and encouraged where helpful

Note here that there's a big caveat. Partial answers to too broad questions tend to be frowned upon, since when someone tries to narrow the focus it usually has to take into account all the answers. As such, several partial answers may be a indicative of a problem with the question. We also favor complete answers over partial ones, so it's understandable that partial answers could be lighting rods of downvotes.

should one be expected to always open up another tab/window to check if the answer is redundant?

Well, the JIT guidance for the late answer queue says:

This is a new user's answer to an old question. Watch for hidden gems, non-answers, and spam.

And in the non-answers classification we include:

Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question may be removed. This includes answers that are: [...] exact duplicates of other answers

That doesn't mean that you should open every answer, but there are taletales that makes one suspicious that something fishy is going on, like logical leaping, relevant answers with irrelevant links, etc.

6
  • 1
    That makes sense, and it seems to make a strong argument for including all answers and all comments in the review pane.
    – Ruzihm
    Oct 11 '18 at 18:45
  • @Ruzihm the comments are already included.
    – Braiam
    Oct 11 '18 at 19:38
  • How do you mean? The audit linked in my question does not include any of the comments in the question, nor the other answers nor any of the comments on those answers. And when I was reviewing it, it also hid all comments on the answer itself.
    – Ruzihm
    Oct 11 '18 at 19:43
  • @Ruzihm that's only because it is an audit. Normal reviews include comments under both answers and questions.
    – Braiam
    Oct 11 '18 at 19:55
  • Yes, but only the subject answer. The bare minimum workflow to pass this audit is: get the answer -> go to the question page to see the context -> see very obviously if it's an audit or not-> pick the obviously correct answer if it is an audit. I'm saying if we remove the need to go to the question page, one could correctly pass this audit without being obliged to go to the page that all but explicitly tells you 1. it's an audit and 2. the correct answer for that audit.
    – Ruzihm
    Oct 11 '18 at 20:07
  • I'm ok with audits that might require some extra action. The people that audits are meant to trip up, are the ones that haven't figured out the answer before they click a button.
    – cHao
    Oct 12 '18 at 15:05

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