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I am dumbfounded. I ran into a test question that was a valid answer to the problem (although curt and brief), was the only answer to the question, and was even the solution adopted by the original author asking the question, yet 1. the test question was considered bad and 2. it was "handled" (meaning removed from the site).

Often test questions catch when you are zoning out in your review, but sometimes there are these egregious misses. What gives? How are these picked?

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    I guess the system randomly picks closed questions or deleted answers and shows them as review tests. Most times these posts were originally closed/deleted for a good reason, but one could also argue about some. The system can not distinguish correctly closed and doubtfully closed posts.
    – Byte Commander Mod
    Sep 25, 2015 at 7:58

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The question, and the answer content:

Try using a live distro to edit or remove your /root/.bashrc.


The answer is correct, but it's far from being a good answer. The question already knows it's a broken /root/.bashrc file so the answer might as well just say:

Fix it!

The OP figured that out and restored the file from /etc/skel/ in the end. They should have posted that as the answer but I hope you can see the difficulty in deciding what we do with answers like that and why it came down on the side of deletion this time.

In an ideal world somebody would have replaced the answer with a better one (or closed it against one of the other versions of that question where the file is restored) but given the OP had their solution before the answer was deleted, it might not have seemed necessary.


I also know that I have a lot more information than you're presented with when given it to review. I think this is one of those times where the audit isn't fair.

Thankfully it's only an audit.

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  • Yah. Well, today, I fell for a question about removing DRM from ePub. The answer gave the correct answer for PDF, so assuming this may be related. I accepted it. Little I knew it was another trick question. Is the idea to check if the reviewer is awake, or to earn a Ph.D?
    – 0xF2
    Oct 19, 2015 at 21:28

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