Timeline for Opinion: Link-only answers are bad except for in one case: Software Recommendations
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
6 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| May 16, 2019 at 8:05 | comment | added | Jonathan | I put an EDIT in to rephrase, my primary contention is whether or not they should be deleted, rather than to justify their relative quality | |
| May 16, 2019 at 8:03 | comment | added | Jonathan | I would argue some of those can be omitted -- install is on the page, how you use it is in the docs, why it's good is user-specific, why it's being recommended is because it answers the question. Okay, granted it would be "a lower quality answer", but should it be deleted? No, because even a link only software recommendation may save someone hours of searching online. | |
| May 15, 2019 at 14:26 | comment | added | terdon Mod | @pomsky I guess it will depend on the specific question. It might be theoretically possible that the tool is exactly what the question asks for and the question is specific enough to know this, but in the vast majority of cases, the answer should explain why this particular tool is being suggested. But at the very least, you could include the name of the tool or an example of its usage. An answer that's just a link to the tool is not very useful even in the best of cases. | |
| May 15, 2019 at 14:23 | comment | added | pomsky | It's true, almost always answers like this tend to be low quality ones (and perhaps spammy sometimes) when they don't contain any details. But I don't think they should be considered as "link-only answers" per se, and more importantly I think they should not be flagged as "not-an-answer" (which is the right thing to do with actual link-only answers). Could you please clarify? | |
| May 15, 2019 at 9:11 | history | edited | dessert | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| May 15, 2019 at 8:20 | history | answered | terdonMod | CC BY-SA 4.0 |