Timeline for Using comments to vet answers
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
16 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Apr 28, 2013 at 21:59 | comment | added | hakre | Yeah, best guess is: OP does not know really what to ask and makes a question in a good sense of a guess. And so opening the guessing club: Try to answer, if you produce anything i can work with which you don't know what I need until I accept yours is really daunting. Do not take part of these guessing clubs. Ban those questions early. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 16:01 | comment | added | s_ha_dum | @ChipBennett ... so you say. That is the issue. I disagree. I won't be responding again unless you can come up with a new point. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:58 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | Not only was the comment intended to be an answer, but it was the correct answer, and when written as an answer, was written almost verbatim from the comment: "Visit the permalinks page (which will flush it) and check again. WordPress probably just needs to be nudged to recognize your addition to the hierarchy." All this (and your interpretation) implies to me is that people are just hesitant to add an answer that may get down-voted. It is perfectly acceptable to post suggestions as answers, even if they don't resolve the issue for the OP's specific circumstances. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:49 | history | edited | s_ha_dum | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added the "Clarification" line.
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| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:39 | comment | added | s_ha_dum | No, I am not @ChipBennett arguing a straw man. I am responding to the particular example you posted, which I read very differently than you. I am disputing your interpretation of that comment thread-- that particular comment thread-- but by extension similar threads. I have even stated as much at least once before. If you don't know the answer, or expect something might be an answer but aren't sure, or you are guessing at a solution with a relatively low probability (60-70%... that is subjective though) of the guess being the correct answer, you are fishing for information. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:24 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | @s_ha_dum you're arguing a straw man. I am specifically referring to answers posted as comments. You're talking about clarifying questions posted as comments. In the specific instance of my OP, the correct answer was flush your rewrite rules. It was not a clarifying question, nor did the commenter intend it as such. As stated in a follow-up comment, he posted it as a comment because he was unsure if it was the correct answer. That is intentionally by-passing SE site mechanics. Your "clarifying questions" straw man is a separate matter entirely. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:18 | comment | added | s_ha_dum | @EAMann ... agreed, but why add an answer when what you really want is to gather information about the problem? Sure, you can remove your answers. I have remove one or two of mine, but generally bad answers just hang around perpetrating bad information. And again, why "answer" when the point is gathering information? | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 15:14 | comment | added | EAMann Mod | When you leave an answer, if it proves to be incorrect, you are capable of removing it yourself. You don't have to wait for downvotes or moderator attention to remove your own, potentially inaccurate, answers. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 14:26 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | "hat is an experiment, not at answer." What prevents that alleged "experiment" from being written as an answer, with an explanation for why it can potentially resolve the problem? Which better conforms to SE mechanics? Which is more likely to help build a "knowledge base" of answers to WordPress-related questions? | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 14:19 | comment | added | s_ha_dum |
@ChipBennett ... I read the question. Please do not pretend otherwise. I disagree with your interpretation. That does not mean I didn't read. Vancoder clearly states that "I wasn't sure". That is an experiment, not at answer. Down voting doesn't remove answers, and there are bad answers here. Someone will try those answers, down voted or not. (Note: I think but am not sure that there might be a downvote == delete threshold but voting rates do not seem to be high enough to push many answers over it.) "Add your guesses and delete them later" is a poor way to encourage quality answers.
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| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:52 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | Please read the full comments, to wit: "ecause I don't post answers unless I'll pretty sure they are correct answers - and I wasn't sure. Incorrect comments are better than incorrect answers, in my opinion.". This was a case of posting an answer as a comment, in case the answer proved to be incorrect. That is a blatant disregard for WPSE mechanics. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:51 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | "but the alternative is cluttered answers" That's what up/down voting is for: wrong answers are voted down, and good answers are voted up; the "clutter" is thus handled by the community. Comments, however, cannot be down-voted, and can only be dealt with by moderators. Answers can be up/down voted and/or edited to be improved. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:49 | comment | added | s_ha_dum | @ChipBennett ... "(which will flush it) and check again" -- "and check again" is clearly a debugging move. This is no different from "disable your plugins and see if you can isolate the issue". | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:47 | comment | added | Chip Bennett | Asking debugging questions is one thing, but that clearly wasn't the intent here. (See the follow-up comments.) It is far better to post an answer, providing the solution, and then explaining why that can resolve the issue. Again, it might not solve the problem in the OP's specific case, but it very well might solve the same issue for someone else - and that is the ultimate objective of a Question-and-Answer Knowledge Base site such as WPSE. | |
| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:46 | history | edited | s_ha_dum | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
Added paragraph about cluttered comments vs cluttered answers
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| Apr 23, 2013 at 13:34 | history | answered | s_ha_dum | CC BY-SA 3.0 |